Boys Waterpolo Head Coach David Fox uses his experience as both a referee and coach to lead Boys Water Polo to success. With last year’s Head Coach, Howie Kalter ’07, on paternity leave, Fox fills the position in hopes of improving team performance and forming a positive connection with the team.
Fox wrote in an email to The Phillipian that he began his foray into the sport at 13 years old in Tulsa, Oklahoma after some swimming friends invited him to compete in a water polo tournament. After playing, Fox decided to continue, and following his graduation from Bates College, he returned to Tulsa to coach water polo. At Harvard, where Fox received his graduate degree, he went on to help train the school’s men’s water polo team.
“When I was 13 and living in Tulsa, some older friends from swimming invited me to spend the weekend playing in a water polo tournament. It was not because of any potential talent they recognized; they just needed a seventh person in order to have a full team. I had much fun and played until I finished college. Right after college, I landed a job in Tulsa coaching water polo, and I was fortunate to coach a few players already on the USA National Youth and National Junior Teams. One went on to the National Team and was national collegiate player of the year. Because of the players’ success, by the time I was 26, I had spent several years with access to, and mentoring from, many of the top coaches in the country. I then went to graduate school and helped coach the Men’s Water Polo Team at Harvard; in the off-season, I worked with college players as part of the Olympic Development Program,” wrote Fox.
With Kalter not coaching this season, Co-Captain Jason Kokones ’25 mentioned the team’s skepticism coming into the fall and seeing a new face. Kokones noted Fox’s tendency to focus on hammering down water polo fundamentals. Mastering the basics of the sport has forced the team to compete with as few mistakes as possible, which Kokones has attributed to the teams’ strong performance in-game.
“[Coach] being new this year, a lot of us were skeptical about his coaching style and what he’s going to do to our team and whether or not he could piggyback off of what Coach Kalter… was doing. He does things a little differently than Coach Kalter, but he does it in a way that holds all [of us] accountable. One thing that he’s been doing a lot is focusing on our fundamentals. For the first, two, three weeks of school… a lot of what we’ve been doing [is] focusing on doing the small things right in order to allow us to have a good, clean water polo play,” said Kokones.
Co-Captain Zach Godsey ’25 corroborated his teammate’s comments on Fox’s tendency to focus on building up the team’s fundamentals. He added that while repeating drills seemed odd at first to many members of the team, Godsey has since noticed the benefits of doing so this season.
“Coach Fox is a very fundamentals-oriented coach. A lot of times, the [basic] drills can feel a bit obscure within the context of the game, but then you start to play, and you find out in scrimmage how these drills that he does really apply [to better performance]… He’s very fundamentals-oriented, and that’s his coaching style. He likes to really try to build up a strong base for all the players,” said Godsey.
Fox mentioned his hopes for the team’s takeaways from his coaching: not just to learn how to perform better in the pool but also to have his players leave the Water Polo program as adults more capable of taking on life’s challenges.
“Too often, there is a disconnect between what I hope to do as a coach and what I actually do as a coach. I hope players exit our program better positioned to be good teammates and partners—sacrificing the wants of the one for the needs of the many—in life, and to be good, modest, and diligent adults,” wrote Fox.
Looking forward to the remainder of the season, Fox hopes to foster a sense of family among the team’s players so that they can perform at their highest level towards the end of the season.
“In terms of the water polo team this season, our goal is just to create a family in which everyone is supported and to play the best we can, with the context of life at Andover, at the end of the season,” wrote Fox.
