By next season, the NCAA committees that govern both men's and women's water polo will have in place a program that helps conferences educate officials, standardizes rules interpretations and provides assistance in selecting officials for national championships.

The National Officiating Improvement Program, championed by the men's and women's water polo committees, will begin with the 2005-06 season, with funding and oversight provided by the Association. The NCAA already sponsors six officiating improvement programs in football, baseball, softball, men's and women's basketball, ice hockey and wrestling. The Association provides funding for similar programs for volleyball and soccer, but they are run by other organizations.

The program will pay for the salary of an NCAA national coordinator and travel for the coordinator to operate the program. Officials hope to fill the position by next spring, with an August start date for the new hire.

For some people involved with water polo at the collegiate level, the program is welcomed with open arms, while others worry that whoever is chosen to operate it will push the sport away from its collegiate roots and toward the rougher, more physical game played internationally.

Educating officials will be a main component in the job description of the new coordinator, though many associations and conferences have their own clinics and education retreats for officials and many involved with the sport have their own ideas on future education strategies.

Ken Weiner, associate athletics director at the University of California, Los Angeles, and chair of the NCAA Men's Water Polo Committee, said the education element would be like a "refresher course, keeping people fresh on the rules."

"Keeping up the consistency of rule-calling is important at the NCAA level, and it keeps the officials fresh in terms of maintaining contact with one another," he said.

Al Beaird, executive director of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, said his officials attend a mandatory preseason clinic to review new rules and instructions from the NCAA Water Polo Rules Committees.

Beaird would like to bring more former college student-athletes -- particularly more women student-athletes -- who played at a high level of the sport into officiating.

"If we bring them in, and they see more games and move up the chain to get more difficult games, I think the sport is going to be better for it," he said.

Consistency in officiating

Bill Frady, who serves both as chair of the USA Water Polo National Referees and as the United States representative to and secretary of the Amateur Swimming Union of the Americas Technical Water Polo Committee (ASUA TWPC), said the Collegiate Water Polo Association, the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation and the USA Water Polo Association have sound education programs already. As far as he's concerned, the new NCAA coordinator is welcome to reference material from USA Water Polo training items.

The most obvious benefit most people in the water polo community hope to see from the new program is consistency in officiating at different tournaments, be they West Coast, East Coast, Northern California or Southern California venues.

"I think the one thing coaches in every sport always talk about is a higher degree of consistency," said Beaird. "Coaches from different areas of the country and different levels of competition have different expectations, so when they encounter a referee who they're not familiar with, they don't know what to expect from them. Interpretations may be a little bit different.

"They should be the same -- everything is coming from the NCAA committee -- but sometimes rules are interpreted differently, more loosely or more tightly."

Leslie Evans, chair of the NCAA Women's Water Polo Committee, agreed that the program will bring some consistency to the officiating.

"I think it's going to be a pretty big job for both sports -- men's and women's -- spanning the entire school year," Evans said. "In the future we can try to increase the educational opportunities by getting coaches involved as well. I think this coordinator of officials could educate coaches, too."

Beaird said he hopes the new coordinator will be able to give coaches the assurance that whether "they step on the deck at a pool in Southern California or upstate New York, they can expect the same types of calls to be made for the same reasons."

Calling an accurate game is a challenge for any official in a sport where the action is obscured.

"The nature is the sport is quite difficult and (calling a match) is quite subjective," he said. "It's unlike any other sport in that a lot of activity takes place under the water and the referees are on the pool deck. That's a very real obstacle that makes it impossible to be 100 percent accurate."

Frady said the sport was difficult to officiate to the satisfaction of all who participate.

"We do the best we can. I think having a coordinator of officials will help the different conferences have more consistency in officiating," Frady said. "We work pretty hard at keeping it consistent, but having a coordinator would cement the idea."

A uniform style of play

Dan Sharadin, director of American Water Polo, said he is a proponent of regional crossover for officials, something he believes there is not enough of in water polo.

"We don't have a tremendous amount of crossover. Though it's getting better from 10 years ago, we still have a ways to go," he said. "Part of this project is going to be helping in that process. Secondly, I think there's a valuable need to have somebody responsible for a single voice in the training process."

Inconsistencies, he said, happen in every sport, and water polo relies on part-time people who officiate because they have a passion for the sport, not because it pays well.

"Consequently, they are not going to fly coast to coast to make (officiating overlap) happen," he said.

Some officials and others involved with the sport expressed concern about whether the program would shift the NCAA rules interpretations closer to those of FINA, the international federation governing water polo and other water sports. The two rule books are nearly identical, but interpretations of the rules are different on the international stage. FINA interpretations, some say, are looser and prompt more physical play than those endorsed by the NCAA. Many people say FINA-style games are most often called by officials working on the West Coast.

"There's been some concern about escalating the amount of violence," Sharadin said. "The NCAA is not as physical as what we saw in the Olympics. ... We call them a little bit tighter, and there's all sorts of discussion of whether that's appropriate."

At issue is whether calling a tighter game puts athletes who might eventually become Olympians at a disadvantage when they reach the national stage and are expected to play more aggressively than was allowed in NCAA tournaments. While some coaches and officials espouse that view, others point out that only 13 athletes will make an Olympic team, while 500 to 600 student-athletes play the sport at the collegiate level and thousands play at the club level.

Men's committee Chair Weiner said the committee would like to see the games called closer to the rules book, especially toward the end of the season.

"We like what we're seeing at the beginning of the year, and as the year progresses the officiating tends to get a little rougher," he said. "Some calls go uncalled, and the quality of the game gets a little rougher."

While he doesn't see officiating on one coast as better or worse than the other, he noted that the student-athletes on the West Coast "tend to be bigger and more aggressive."

"It's a different quality of game and it may be construed as a rougher game," Weiner said.

Evans, the women's committee chair, said the international influence on the collegiate game could be one of the first items the coordinator confronts, including the NCAA rules committees and coaches groups in on the discussion.

A coordinator, who also will make recommendations to the water polo committee members who decide which officials will be assigned to championship games, will have the discretion to suggest officials who call tighter games to the committee and discourage members from choosing those who allow the rougher style.

A move toward a less physical game could be under way internationally as well. Frady recently returned from a meeting of international water polo representatives in London, and the increasingly physical nature of the game was a topic of discussion.

"We're trying to get it back to a less physical game, more swimming, less wrestling, that kind of thing," Frady said.

Some would like to see the NCAA committee provide more leadership and direction on the interpretation issue. They hope the officiating improvement program will provide a vehicle for that to happen, especially through linking officiating performance to assignments at championships.

Overall, the concept of an officiating improvement program for water polo seems well-received, though Frady advised that some officials might think their advancement opportunities are being hampered by the new rung in the ladder.

"Officials have to realize the coordinator is going to do what's best for the sport, not what's best for the individual officials," Frady said. "His job will be to make sure officials are officiating fairly."

Loren Bertocci, technical director of the Collegiate Water Polo Association and a well-respected official, called the program "a good first step" toward improving the game.

"It's a very good step for getting all of the top college coaches in the country to adjust to a similar style across the country," he said. "To the extent that we get uniformity, we're better off."