Water Polo
Favorite athlete: Ashleigh Johnson
Favorite team: Philadelphia Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: Getting to PA’s Big School States as the smallest school there and placing 4th overall
Most embarrassing moment/ funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: One of the floating nets falling on me during a game. Had to put the game on hold while I fixed the goal with kickboards.
Music on playlist: R.E.M, Neko Case, Hole, Oasis, Mazzy Star
Future Plans: Going to college for Mechanical Engineering
Words to live by: “Be willing to share your time, resources, and talents with others.”
One goal before turning 30: Travel all over the world
One thing people don’t know about me: I am currently a student welder at Eastern Center for Arts and Technology.
By GORDON GLANTZ
In the movie version of her rise to water polo stardom, Springfield senior goalkeeper Gretchen Linn will take to the sport like a fish to water and at the urging of her older sister, Anya.
The reality is a little bit different.
While it’s true she volunteered to play the often thankless role of being the last line of defense, it was not an easy transition.
“I wanted to be a goalie because goalies are tall and I’m pretty tall,” said the 6-0 Linn, who had previous experience sacrificing her body as a softball catcher. “But, with the confidence part, I didn’t grasp it at first. It’s like
being a baseball pitcher. Everyone is watching you when the ball gets to you. The basic stuff, I got. The fine-tuning stuff, though, took a couple of tries.”
The first few days were almost like being under fire on a battlefield.
“It was terrible,” she recalled. “The first day, I got a nose bleed. I threw up every day. I think I got nose bleeds for like three weeks straight.”
While she jokes that her nose has gotten a little more crooked each year, the nose bleeds were likely for another reason.
“I think it was from the amount of physical activity,” said Linn. “I had never moved that much ever in my life at once. It was crazy, but I just kept on coming back.”
And it also took a while for her older sister to come around to the idea of the siblings, three years apart, being teammates.
Now a senior, Linn reflected: “It was one of those things where I was kind of interested in it and she said, ‘You can’t do it. It’s my thing. It’s my sport. Go play something else. Go play your (musical) instruments.’ Then, when preseason started, she said, ‘Go get a bathing suit, you’re coming with me.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not.’ Now, here I am, three years later.”
The Apprentice
Then, while serving an apprenticeship under starting senior goalie Taylor Schulz -- and with the guidance of head coach Jason Boles and assistant Ben Gendron, a former goalie himself -- the rest became Springfield Water Polo history.
“(Schulz) really drilled it my head, from training me all the time,” said Linn. “She said I had the potential to be really good, but I had to do a lot of stuff first and fine tune it later, and then I just kept on practicing to be as good as you can be.
“She taught me everything I know.”
Leading the Way
Fast forward to this, her senior year, Linn is one of four captains on a team that is currently undefeated and on a path to the state fray after placing fourth a year ago.
“Right now, we are on target to get an automatic bid to states, which has never happened at Springfield before,” said Boles. “Being the tiny little program that we are, we have produced an exceptional program with exceptional players.”
Linn said she looks back on last season’s postseason run as a tremendous accomplishment, but she is focused on surpassing the achievement of making the Final Four this year.
She believes it is absolutely doable.
“I think so,” said Linn. “Last year, was a transitional year. We had new players. We were trying to figure out our team chemistry, like where everyone should go and how to talk to each other. This year, I feel like we already have our team chemistry figured out, so I feel like we can get even farther this year than we did last year.
“Last year was the first year ever the girls’ team had ever gotten that far. It was more like this whole, ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but we’re going to keep on trying and get as far as we can. We didn’t even care anymore if we got first or second. We just thought it was crazy that we got that far in the first place because it had never happened before.”
A Brick Wall
While water polo is a team game, the Spartans wouldn’t be enjoying their current rarified air without Linn in goal.
“In women’s water polo, having a good goalie solves about 60 to 70 percent of your problems,” said Boles. “She’s like the spine of our team. If I didn’t have Gretchen on my team, being a captain and being a starting
goalie, we wouldn’t be in the position that we’re in without her.
“She’s just amazing. She fell into that unique role as our goalie three years ago. She found herself stepping into a varsity goalie starting role very young.”
After some spot starts as a freshman, the full-time job has been hers from sophomore year on.
“She’s just a brick wall,” said Boles. “That’s all I can say. She’s an absolute genius in there. You see some shots that I’m sure are going in, and she make that extra reach to get to that corner shot or make that extra-long outlet pass for a fast break. Her overall skills of protection just help us to win. We win games because they don’t score on us. The first step is to get that good goalie, and we lucked out when got Gretchen.”
The reality is that Linn has made her luck with 110 percent commitment. The result – the year to year improvement --has been a joy for the coaching staff to witness.
“When it comes to her attitude, and friendliness and approachability, she’s just so coachable,” said Boles. “She’s just one of a kind. She is easy to coach. She wants that feedback and takes that feedback because she wants to get better and do the best job she can for her team.
“She is just a genuine person and fantastic player.”
The War Within
While she now has the skills of playing goalie down cold, Linn realizes that most of mastering the position is mental.
Like a goalie in other sports, the key is a short memory.
“I am one of those people who just gets inside my own head when I start missing shots,” she said. “I have to just reset myself, and say to myself, ‘Get the next one. Get the next one. Get the next one.’ And then the game will be over. You can’t let it get to you, or it will bother you the whole rest of the game.
“At the same time, I’ve learned to deal with positive criticism. That’s something that I have gotten better at, because it will help me get better.”
Looking Ahead
Outside of the pool, Linn has carved out her own unique path through welding, as she goes to technical school – Eastern Center for Arts and Technology in Willow Grove -- in the morning and then back to Springfield in the afternoon.
Linn began the routine as a junior and had found it satisfying in many ways, although she is unable to take many AP classes.
Still, with a heavy honors course load, she maintains a 4.0 GPA and hopes to major in mechanical engineering in college.
“I’d say I’m a pretty strong student,” she said. “I always like to get everything done immediately. It’s less weight on my shoulders.
“At tech school, I try to be the one that’s farthest ahead. At the beginning, they give out a sheet listing all the things you need to do, and I try to be the farthest ahead on everything on that sheet.”
Linn has applied to Temple, Delaware, Scranton, Rutgers and Penn State. She is now waiting to hear back and focusing on being a brick wall and being in the moment with the Spartans.
While Boles says that naming Linn a captain was the “easiest decision of his coaching career,” Linn has not taken it as some sort of honorary title.
“For me, it means that I can speak up for other people, so that they can be listened to and heard from with our coaches and other people on the team,” she said, while extending heartfelt thanks to her parents, Stephanie and Todd, for their support. “I kind of take over a lot of the goalie part of it. I help to train all of the goalies on the team. I practice drills with them, and practice shooting and saving and long passes and outlet passes and stuff like that.
“I do try to get my opinion out there as much as I can, and I do hope for it to be heard. It’s always something that I hope will help better our whole team and help us to get better.”
Since none of the colleges she is looking at has water polo above the club level, Linn knows this could be her last hurrah.
“It was hard, but I think I have accepted it now,” she said, adding that there always adult leagues to seek out down the road. “Last year, when I was thinking about it, I was a little bit upset. It’s a big part of my life and a big part of who I am now.”
And this all goes back to paying it forward with her younger teammates, just like Schulz did for her.
“I just want to be able to give them everything I can for them to learn,” said Linn. “I’m not going to be here for that much longer anymore.
“I just want to give them as much information, and everything that they can use, so that they can get better.”
