Benson has HBWPC rockin’

Natalie Benson has created a sort of domino effect for the Huntington Beach Water Polo Club.

Or, for the more aquatically inclined, maybe it’s been more like a tidal wave.

The club has been on the upswing since Benson took the head coaching job a little more than a year ago. After all, who wouldn’t want to play for a two-time Olympic water polo player considered to be one of the best women’s players in the history of the sport?

Count me in, say players like Katie Rigler, a senior at Rosary High where Benson, 27, also played in high school.

“You feel like you’re playing for yourself but also for her, because she has so much to offer you, so much to teach you,” Rigler said. “She cares so much about not only us winning, but also bonding as a team. She really covers everything that makes a good team and she’s just always thinking of new ways to improve the team. It’s not just a job to her, it’s her passion. It’s contagious to be around.”

This summer, Rigler and the other 18-and-under Huntington Beach Water Polo Club girls’ players coached by Benson showed the water polo community what they could accomplish. They finished 12th at the Junior Olympics in San Jose, while the HBWPC 16-and-under girls took the bronze medal.

Considering the team had just been brought together in mid-April, it was quite an accomplishment. And the 18-and-under girls got another one over the weekend, when they took fourth place at the prestigious Speedo Top 40 tournament in Los Alamitos, featuring top club players from around the country.

“For how well they knew each other, I thought they performed very well [at JOs],” Benson said. “I think that was the first time that both a 16 and an 18-and-under girls team has qualified for JOs in the same year for our club. It is really gratifying. I have girls who want to play for me and want to work hard, and I want to make them successful. That’s really all a coach can ask for, somebody who’s dedicated and willing to put it all out there.

“It’s really neat for me to see them retaining the information I’m telling them, applying the information in games. I’m finding myself not having to remind them as much about the basic fundamentals. It’s gratifying for me, and I hope it’s really gratifying for them. I think our team can obviously do much better than we did this last summer [at JOs].”

Benson, whose husband, Eric, is an assistant coach for HBWPC and also a water polo referee, is definitely no stranger to the game, even if she only started playing it when she was 13. After she won two CIF titles at Rosary High, she went to UCLA, where the defender and center won three NCAA championships (2001, 2003, 2005). In her senior year, Benson, then known by her maiden name of Natalie Golda, was American Water Polo Coaches Assn. Player of the Year and helped the Bruins to a perfect 33-0 record.

In 2004 in Greece and again in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, she played for the United States and helped the squad to bronze and silver medals, respectively.

“The second time I was able to take more of a leadership role,” Benson said. “I knew exactly what I had to do to do my part to make the team successful. I went from scoring two goals in the tournament to scoring nine in Beijing. The experience itself was great. I was lucky enough to be on a very competitive team and earn two medals in my two visits.”

When she was announced as coach at HBWPC, the response was immediate, club Director Alex Alvarez said.

“It’s up and down with pool time, but she had this interest,” Alvarez said. “Girls wanted to come play for her. Once we got the pool time, it just exploded We did a free clinic this summer, and she came in and brought her medals and it really inspires the kids. Just from that clinic, I had 30 or 40 kids who are now interested in water polo.”

Former head coach Vicky Barker, herself a former U.S. national team player, has stayed on and continues to coach the girls as well. The upper-age girls’ program was down for awhile, but HBWPC now has kids from the Edison, Huntington Beach and Fountain Valley high school programs.

They’re kids like Danielle Warde, a senior at Edison who recently committed to UC Irvine.

Warde’s Charger teammate, junior Haley Kunert, started her club career with HBWPC but left for a while due to the uncertainty. But, with Benson aboard, she decided to come back.

“I was really excited,” Kunert said. “I was like, ‘Yes, I can finally play with the club that I started with.’ [Benson] is really, really fun and I’ve learned so much from her. She knows how to connect [coaching] to real-life situations so it just clicks really fast.”

Benson said one of her main requests is simple, that the girls play with passion and energy. That was one of the secrets for Benson in her career.

“As a player, I wasn’t the most creative naturally,” Benson said. “I didn’t see the game as well as some other people do. Some people are just born water polo players, like Kobe Bryant is to basketball. Some things he does are just absolutely ridiculous and Superman stuff. We have some athletes who are like that, but what made me successful as a player was buying into a system, really focusing on my fundamentals and executing my fundamentals in a game. I’m really trying to get that across to them.”

Benson is now six months pregnant and expecting a baby girl.

Plenty of HBWPC team members have given their input on the baby’s possible name, but there’s just one problem.

“Of course, they’re all, like, their names,” Benson said with a grin.