Theo Faugures ’21 has been playing water polo for seven years. As Co-Captain of the Andover Boys Water Polo team, Faugeres leads by example, using his loud voice in the pool to communicate with his teammates.
According to Head Coach Travis Bouscaren ’14, Faugures is a constantly positive leader for the team.
“One thing that really stands out about Theo is his post practice speeches. Even though [this season] it’s not a normal practice and definitely not as fun as it could be if we had full contact, he’s always the first one to say good job to everyone and he keeps a really positive mindset, which has helped the team stay really positive,” said Bouscaren.
How are you trying to connect with the team despite some students being remote and others in-person?
For in-person students, we’ve been able to connect to an extensive degree thanks to practices—they are relatively normal, we can play without masks in the pool as long as we stay 6 feet apart. Just that contact, although indirect, and being able to swim in the same pool as people and be in the same environment and pass the ball around is really nice. For remote students, the way we’ve been doing it is each student has a remote coach and they do remote workouts, and then every few days we promote instances where remote students can interact with on campus students. Last weeked, for instance, we had on-campus Water Polo Olympics, which were a set of exercises, and we split into two teams. Participation by online students was encouraged.
Can you elaborate on how the online students participated in the Water Polo Olympics?
One of the ways they participated was sending emails and interacting online. Another way is actually doing workouts and filming themselves doing those workouts.
How have you been working with the other captains and the coaches to organize activities?
As far as connecting with other students, [Coach Bouscaren] has been a great help as far as sending out emails and keeping the Canvas page updated to try to bring the online and on campus students together. The Captains have been trying to find activities where the online and on campus students can interact so that we can make suggestions to the coach so he can organize them.
How have past captains influenced you as a leader?
Here at Andover, we have multiple coaches and sometimes a coach’s expertise isn’t water polo, so it’s really important to have the leadership and guidance of the Captains to help the team improve. Past Captains have inspired me to take a more active role in encouraging my peers.
Editor’s Note: Theo Faugures is a Multilingual Editor for The Phillipian.
