The St. Thomas water polo club team faces a new challenge this year aside from finding a time to practice in the Anderson Athletic and Recreation Complex pool: adjusting its format to meet the facility’s precautionary rules.

For water polo president junior Skyler Wickland, the AARC’s restrictions have posed a continuum of problems for the team’s practice style.

“We’ve had a lot of issues with throwing the balls at the windows, because obviously we can’t break them,” Wickland said. “So that limits our ability to only throwing on one side.”

Although the AARC has certain restrictions on how the team can practice, the facility still provides a strong atmosphere for the team to practice in.

Pool Director Tom Hodgson said the pool’s rules are to prevent lasting implications for the university.

“We would have to drain the pool, which would involve probably either pulling a permit or at the very least getting permission from the city of St. Paul to dump over a half a million gallons of water, chlorinated water into their system,” Hodgson said.

For Wickland, the biggest threat the team faces isn’t from the AARC but from not being known on campus.

“A lot of people don’t know we’re here. I know I talk to a lot of even my close friends and they’re like ‘water polo club? I didn’t know we had such a thing.’” Wickland said. “I think just getting the word out is one of our biggest limitations right now.”

Sean Crotty can be reached at crot0230@stthomas.edu.