The American water polo recruiting “radar” is most attuned to California – players from the state go on to play for schools all over the country.
Very rarely does it pass over the Midwest.
Redshirt junior center Matt Farmer, the lone Midwesterner on the UCLA men’s water polo team, is one of five players not from California. He played water polo at Fenwick High School in Oak Park, Illinois, where he was a four-time All American, a two-time Illinois Player of the Year and a three-time state champion.
Farmer’s water polo career began as a little kid, when he reluctantly agreed to go to a practice after having swum his entire life. He fell in love with the sport immediately, eventually playing for Windy City Water Polo club and for Fenwick under legendary coach Dave Perry.
Perry was a pioneer in the Midwestern water polo community, building the sport from the ground up when he first started in 1979.
“He read a bunch of books, went to a clinic and then coached his first season of water polo. From there he was a voracious learner, reading every single thing he could and going to as many games as he could,” said Kyle Perry, Dave Perry’s son and the current coach of the Fenwick men’s water polo team. “(If) the national team was playing nearby, he was going. He was making trips out to California just to watch games and go to clinics.”
After Dave Perry started at Fenwick in 1987, he and his rival, Jim “Moose” Mulcrone of Brother Rice High School, won 14 of the 15 state championships from 1988-2002 combined, dominating Illinois water polo.
Although opponents from across the pool deck, the two coaches worked together to transform the sport from a club to one sanctioned by the Illinois High School Association.
Following Mulcrone’s death in 2002, Fenwick became an unstoppable force, winning eight straight state championships. Behind the play of future UCLA men’s water polo captain and utility player Chris Wendt, the Friars won 51 straight games between their 2006 and 2007 seasons.
The winning tradition Dave Perry built at Fenwick cultivated a community where former players would return from college and share the skills they learned with the high school team.
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Among the players to come back and help Farmer improve was Wendt, who had played years of club water polo with him in Illinois and California.
“I always talked to Matt and all the guys and saw where they were going,” Wendt said. “Both (Matt and I) would spend summers in California and share the stuff we learned with Coach (Dave) Perry and the whole team.”
As a high school freshman, Farmer earned a spot on the varsity team, and the year later, earned the first of his three first-team All-Illinois honors. That year, Kyle Perry became Fenwick’s interim water polo coach as his father’s three-year battle with prostate cancer wore on.
Dave Perry continued to help coach as much as he could while the team slowly transitioned over to his son.
“He really loved just hanging with the boys and coaching,” Kyle Perry said. “He would be on the deck in his wheelchair barking out orders and telling guys where to go and what to do.”
Led by Farmer, Dave Perry’s last season was one for the record books. Fenwick went 36-0, setting the Illinois water polo record for most wins in a single season.
“I remember in the state championship game, when we were getting our medals and our trophy, they announced his name and pushed him across in his wheelchair to get his medal,” Farmer said. “Everyone in the crowd went insane. It was awesome to see the appreciation that he deserved. It was hard definitely, but it was great to see him still doing something he loved to do.”
Dave Perry’s 24-year coaching career at Fenwick ended with a 711-70-1 record, 17 state championships and an immense impact on all of his players, including Farmer, who credits him with why he fell in love with water polo and why he continues to play it today.
Farmer would again lead Fenwick to the state championship game the next year, where the school’s championship win streak ultimately came to an end at the hands of Lyons Township High School.
He took the blame upon himself for his team’s loss, as a bout with mononucleosis took him out of the pool for the month and a half leading up to the championship.
“It was probably the most hurtful thing of my whole life,” Farmer said. “I just felt like I let coach (Kyle) Perry down; I felt like I let the school down.”
The next year, Farmer was training over the winter with the USA Men’s Youth National Team when he suffered a broken hand. With the start of his school’s water polo season just a few months away, Farmer opted for surgery.
“I tried to play through it and when I realized it was too bad to play through, I got the surgery,” Farmer said. “I was going to make my best effort to come back and I knew nothing was going to stop me.”
Two weeks before the second to last round of the playoffs, doctors told Farmer that his hand hadn’t healed enough for him to play that postseason. Kyle Perry remembers Farmer returning to the team teary-eyed, convincing the group that, with or without him, the team was going to win the championship.
One week later, a second trip to the doctors office resulted in him being cleared to play.
“We were pretty sure he wasn’t going to come back. He’s got an incredible career ahead of him and he’s (already) won two championships,” Kyle Perry said. “(But) he came back in and was such a boost to the guys. He was so supportive of the guys and made them believe with or without him, and then once came he back, it was with him – we’ve got this.”
In the championship game, Farmer was one of five players to score two goals, leading the Friars to a 10-4 victory.
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Now at UCLA, Farmer is a two-time national champion and has been an integral component behind the team’s current 55-game win streak.
“I’m glad he flew under the radar because of what he’s been able to do for this program,” said UCLA coach Adam Wright. “He flies under the radar here where maybe he’s not getting all the credit, but he’s done so much for this team starting all the way back to 2014.”
That year, when UCLA beat six-time defending national champion USC for Wright’s first NCAA title, Farmer finished second on the team in exclusions drawn. He was also second in 2015, both times behind senior center Gordon Marshall.
The Midwest may be known best for its deep-dish pizza and for people who call soft drinks “pop,” but it’s also home to a burgeoning water polo scene that Farmer represents on the national stage.