Building a modern water polo club — aiming for 50/50

50/50 gender representation, fair play, value-driven work and lifelong participation. How did we build the new LUGI water polo club to reflect the 2025 vision of the Swedish swimming federation? Part 1: 50/50 gender representation.

When I joined LUGI in 2015, I was one of 4 women in the club… Anastasia (aged 9), Amalia (age 14), Antonia was the only senior female player and Tove coached the under 12s. Flash forward to 2020 and LUGI has almost 50/50 gender representation across the board, leadership group, coaches and players in a club hovering around 100 members.

So how did we do it?

Here are a few of the key things we learnt over the past 5 years that are key to attracting and retaining women and girls in sport.

Advocate for equal representation

It matters what people see and hear. When girls always get the ‘worst’ practice times or game times, or they get a ‘leftover’ coach, or have to figure out their own uniforms because the club only has merchandise for boys, it sends a clear message about which players are valued within the club. By having female leaders in the board, leadership and coaching its much more likely that they will advocate for female representation, but it is a responsiblity of everyone and not only women to advocate and change the game.

In LUGI this looked like:

• Creating a vision for the club of 50/50 representation on the board, leadership, coaching and players, and reviewing those numbers at all leadership meetings. We asked senior female players to get involved in the leadership and coaching and help at recruiting fairs and events.
• Using pictures of girls on our flyers, and sometimes having specific ‘girls polo’ flyers, as well as stating clearly on our website and communications that women and beginners were welcome and encouraged to try out
• Creating uniforms for both boys and girls, and making the cost of this equal for all our juniors and kids so involvement was economically equal
• Dividing our ‘best’ training times equally between women, men, beginners and juniors, to be clear that we valued them all equally in the club

LUGI Members arranged by gender and age, 2012–2020

Create a culture of inclusion

Part of attracting and retaining members of both genders was to create an environment where everyone felt welcome, respected, valued and involved. This meant that changes need to be made to the social, cultural and even physical aspects of the environment.

In LUGI this meant:

• Welcoming all new players at LUGI regardless of experience, gender, sexuality, background etc. We start and end each training together, make the plan and expectations clear, and celebrate new players by cheering for them at the end of training. We send a buddy to help new players navigate the pool on their first day and check in with them after their first training.
• Creating clear values, vision and expectations on all LUGI members, and took the hard decision to exclude those who couldn’t commit to them. These are clear on our website, we teach our juniors the values and get players and leaders to use these values to navigate hard discussions and discipline.
• We focussed a lot on the social aspects of the sport, having a 30min land training to be able to chat and connect before training, and going out to eat together or have a team picnic whenever possible. The more girls are connected to their team, the more they will turn up to training, so the significance of team bonding and friendships cannot be ignored.

LUGI’s ‘CORE’ values make it simple and clear to all members what is expected

Emphasise the social aspects and focus on mastery not perfection

Research suggests female participation is influenced by a sport experience that encourages socialising and fun. Focussing on a mastery approach (always getting 1% better) and developing skills, more than focussing on the score helps retain more girls. Make it clear that beginners are welcome, and you are focussed on growth, rather than being expected to have the skills from day 1.

What does this look like in LUGI?

• We focus a lot on the social aspects of the sport, having a 30min land training to be able to chat and connect before training, and going out to eat together or have a team picnic whenever possible. The more girls are connected to their team, the more they will turn up to training, so the significance of team bonding and friendships cannot be ignored.
• We focus on fun and small wins in the beginning, building up the skills for self discipline and long term development. Girls who haven’t been involved in sport before can get discouraged quickly when they don’t ‘get it’ immediately and ‘everyone else is better than them’.
• We provide our coaches with a lot of resources around coaching with a growth mindset. Many girls get discouraged in the pursuit of perfection or winning. We think that all growth should be celebrated, and help our players develop an athlete mindset. Skills like the ability to set goals and reflect on their development take time.

Senior women’s team doing some team bonding

Ask for help & collaborate

Female waterpolo is a small community, and helping each other is always win-win. More female players in one club is not a threat to the others, it’s more teams and which means better competition overall.

When we started, we got in contact with other clubs and female players to ask what they had tried that worked. We found that so many women in the other clubs were excited to have more girls getting involved and were more than happy to share ideas and support each other. Collaborations have been some of the best memories and experiences I have of water polo.

Here are a few examples of how we collaborated with and were helped by other clubs:

• We played mixed ‘fun’ matches with local girls and LGBTQ+ teams focussed on learning game play, rather than keeping score.
• We hosted Halloween and Christmas themed mini-tournaments where we could get new players and teams to play for fun.
• We arranged several ‘womens water polo’ days in collaboration with other clubs, so girls early and often were exposed to the larger female waterpolo community to get inspired and motivated.
• We created a combined regional girls team when none of the clubs had enough players to compete on their own.
• We took our female players to the ‘come and try’ days of other clubs to help them give good coaching, play exhibition matches and show prospective players that waterpolo is for girls.
• We joined other clubs on their waterpolo camps when we didn’t have enough resources to organise a camp.
• We opened up our beach polo teams to players who didn’t have a home club to play in the girls division, which meant that there were more teams and a better competition overall.
• We shared our member handbook with clubs trying to start up work with girls or values, so they didn’t have to ‘reinvent the wheel’.

A picture from one of our earliest collaborations with the Danish team HSK

Support your leaders and players where there is a power imbalance

No matter how confident or competent someone is, they need backup when there is a power imbalance. This could be because of age, gender, sexuality, background etc. Just because your club or team will respect a referee, coach or official based on the position and not the person, doesn’t mean that others will, and having the support of the club matters in these situations.

Water polo is a small sport, the nature of which means that a lot of clubs and teams are dependent on coaches, leaders and players who don’t conform to the values set by the sport federation of fair play, respect and inclusion.

Female, young or minority represented coaches, leaders and referees need backup while the larger culture is still changing. I can’t count on my hands the amount of games I have coached or refereed where there was a male leader from the other club who was physically bigger than me, and was so verbally and physically aggressive that I felt unsafe and moderated my behaviour to accommodate them. I’ve refereed games where I had to call an experienced referee after and say ‘this coach should have been red carded but I was alone and feared for my safety so I didn’t’.

Those few times where I have had parents, leaders and officials (even from other clubs) there who can help create a safe environment, I have been much more comfortable and able to give a red card to an aggressive coach, or stop a game or behaviour which goes against our values.

What did we at LUGI learn from these situations?

• Get parents and older club members to attend games when you have young or female coaches or referees so they feel physically secure to make the decisions they are there to make.
• Everyone should have the same opportunity to make ‘bad’ calls and learn, but try to do this at training and give as much feedback as much as possible so they have more confidence to back their decisions in a game.
• Voice your support and engage in the discussion when minorities (age, gender, background, sexuality) in your club bring an issue to your awareness. This can be as trivial as girls teams feeling like they get worse times to play or train, or as serious as accusations of violence, bullying or sexual assault. It takes a lot of courage to speak up when there is a power imbalance, so take time to understand what is being said.

Remember it’s a marathon, not a sprint

Fighting for inclusion and changing norms is tiring work, and sustainable results take time. Give your leaders and players encouragement, let them know that you appreciate their work. Help them wherever possible so they can be energised to keep building a better environment and opportunities for the players and the club to grow.