Competitive swimmer turned water polo champion Ryan Ko (2024) balances a busy work-life schedule as a Trinity Hall MPhil student and Cambridge University Blues athlete. Talking to Ryan about his most recent win at Varsity, we learned why sport is so important for students at University and how he tackles his commitments in and out of the pool.
Like most water polo players at the University, I got into water polo as a competitive swimmer. About a decade ago, I was asked by my swimming coach to try out water polo because the club needed a player to fill the team – and slowly over time, water polo began to replace swimming.
Balancing my schedule this past year has been quite challenging but it’s not impossible. It just requires a lot of planning and self-motivation. Throughout the year, my academic week tended to be cut down to five days because I would have up to two days taken up by training and matches every week. In some ways, I found this quite helpful because it removed the time in my schedule for procrastination.
Academic life is so intense and sports are such a good way to help with that stress. Whenever I get into the pool, I feel so much more relaxed and can just forget about all my deadlines for an hour or so. Also, there’s something about being part of a team sport that has benefited me in so many ways. Water polo builds a really particular type of bond between teammates: you slowly begin to internalise the individual playing styles of everyone on the team, hopefully getting to the point where you can predict what your teammates will do in the pool before they tell you. That ability to read each other’s minds is really key because then your play, both in attack and defence, becomes really quick and fluid. Some of my closest friends are in the team, including my best friend with whom I first began playing water polo, as well as Nick and Zach, who are both also at Trinity Hall. It sounds cliché but the friendships I have made in the pool are really special to me.
I was nervous and excited. We were incredibly prepared – we had studied their line-up for a while and had a solid game plan. We knew, on paper, that the odds were in our favour – but as previous Varsities have shown, anything can happen in the heat of the moment. I had a big group of friends coming to support, many of whom graduated from Trinity Hall last year – I was, of course, so grateful that they came but it amped up the pressure.
The Men’s Blues match was late in the evening – which meant there was a lot of time for the mental and physical run-up. I knew I wanted to take the day easy and to try to not to think about the match until around two hours before it began. I had a slow morning and in the early afternoon hung out with some friends who had travelled to Cambridge to watch the match. I arrived at the pool at around 3pm, ready to watch and support the other teams that were playing throughout the day. Maybe an hour and a half before our kick-off, we all began locking in: land warm-up, team talks, and trying to mentally get in the zone.
I think in the moment, winning was more relief than anything else. We had trained non-stop for two terms for that one match and it was a perfect end to our season for our hard work to manifest in a win. It feels amazing to be able to contribute to the history of the club by bringing the trophy back to Cambridge. Around half of the Blues are graduating this year, so it’s the perfect way to end our sporting career at the university.
I reckon just give it a go. I think it can seem a bit intimidating because it can be a bit physical and requires a lot of different skills from different sports: swimming, wrestling, treading water, throwing. At the same time, I think this is why water polo is so fun: you get to do a bit of everything in one.