Afghan Water Polo Players Regroup After Being Denied Visas to Train in Newport Beach

If the State Department won’t let Afghanistan’s Olympic hopefuls come to Newport Beach to learn how to play water polo, then the trainers will go to Afghanistan.

Last month, the U.S. Consulate denied the squad’s visas for a three-month training period in California. They were scheduled to arrive in California on Christmas Day and begin training with American athletes at Corona Del Mar High School. Based on fears that the players would try to stay in the country illegally, the decision seemingly ended the tenacious teams’ dreams of escaping the warfare to train in modern facilities.

But this month, the Afghanistan Water Polo announced that “Afghanistan Water Polo will be sending coaches from the United States and Germany to Afghanistan from May through July to coach the Afghanistan National Water Polo Men’s Team, grow the Pol-e-Charki Swim and Water Polo Team, and create another grass roots water polo team in Kabul.”

It's an uphill climb. When Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jeremy Piasecki, the team's coach and a Newport Beach native held tryouts three years ago, none of the 26 men he chose had ever played the sport.

“I don’t know if we will make the 2016 Olympics," he said. "It would be a dream beyond anything I could ever imagine. But what we are really trying to do here is create heroes in Afghanistan. We want athletes to gain culture, experience and education and bring it back to their country. We want the country, its people and children, to have something to dream about, something to aspire to.

“Hundreds of people attend our practices — hundreds — you don’t see that anywhere,” said Piasecki, the team's coach and a Newport Beach native. “This country is craving something good, something to look forward to, something to cheer for."

With the new approach, the program’s organizers hope to convince the US Consulate over time to grant the athletes’ visas and allow the Afghan Water Polo Team to travel to the US. Part of the strategy would be to have the team travel to another first-world country in September to establish an example of the team's intentions and track record.

The only Afghanistan player to be granted a visa to enter the Unites States was the nation’s only female water polo player. She will come to train with women’s college teams and learn more about coaching, so that she can return to her home country and begin to form the first female Afghanistan National Water Polo Team, according to a statement released by Afghanistan Water Polo.

Though the Afghan Water Polo program is in its infancy, the team’s mettle has already been tested time and again.

In their journey to become Afghanistan’s first Olympic Water Polo team, the Taliban killed three of the soldier-athletes in combat. A fourth, who guarded the pool during practice, died after stepping on a landmine just off the pool's perimeter. The sheer logistics of forming a national water polo team in a war-torn, poverty stricken nation with only 13 pools could have stopped them before they got started.

Yet team members remain determined to bring "swimming football," as the sport is colloquially known, to their war-ravaged nation. With the help of American soldiers who grew up playing the sport in Orange County, they formed a team and a dream of one day competing on the world stage.

There will be a fundraiser for the team Feb. 16 in Irvine. The event will include a catered dinner, silent auction, and a presentation about the progress of growing water polo in Afghanistan. All proceeds from the event will fund the coaches’ trip to Afghanistan in May and to support grass roots water polo programs in Afghanistan.