When water polo players Odran Fitzgerald and David Li graduated from the school in 2020, neither one of them ever imagined they’d be back in the pool so soon.
After being coached in the community for so many years, now, they find themselves at the new pool, in the Zierk Athletic Center, coaching and giving back to the very community they were once a part of.
Fitzgerald graduated from SMU and came back to coach water polo in 2022 after having not touched the sport in over a year.
“I’ve been involved with the sport, since playing at St Mark’s, and then with Pegasus, which is the main Dallas (water polo) club who’s associated with St Mark’s water polo, and then another big person in water polo here in Dallas,” Fitzgerald said. “I wanted to get back into it and get back into that community. It’s changed over the couple of years that I’ve been coaching.”
Despite now being a full-time engineer, Fitzgerald is still finding ways to give back to the team and is currently coaching a recreational middle school water polo team about two to three days a week.
“I think it’s really just for the joy and for watching kids grow up and really learn to be themselves and learn to become better men playing a sport, playing water polo, the challenging sport that it is,” Fitzgerald said. “You really learn who someone is, learn who you are. And that’s, for me, that’s, that’s the main thing.”
Li, went to the University of Toronto and is also currently coaching water polo at 10600.
For most of his college career, Li didn’t know what he wanted to do as a person or as a student and found himself extremely lost.
“Everyone says you should think about your dreams, think about what you want. And I thought about all of it, and I didn’t actually know what I wanted,” Li said. “There are the obvious answers, everyone wants money and security and things like that. It feels weird saying it out loud, but what people wanted, like security and money, wasn’t really worth it to me. It wasn’t worth the price.”
For Li, the best way of finding his own purpose was in creating meaningful relationships with others, as well as giving and assigning values to others in his community, instead of going down a regular career path that wouldn’t have any significance toward him.
“You need something that you are good at. And I felt like I was pretty good at water polo.” Li said.
The current players on the team have all felt the impact of receiving coaching from former St. Mark’s players who understand the school and are able to connect with the players in a way that traditional coaches can’t.
“I think it’s cool that water polo is so deeply rooted in the community that alumni have returned to help foster the new generation of players,” said sophomore Sebastian Medina. “It means a lot to us, and we’re grateful to have them here.”
