HASLETT - It’s senior night for the Haslett water polo team, and while many senior classes come and go, this one was special. That’s because they were the founding members of the program

“Just a bunch of guys on the swim team, we were looking for a fall sport, hopefully get us in shape for swimming," said senior Spencer Rice.

“So we, a couple of guys, I think there's four of us left, we decided we should make a water polo team,” said senior Mcain Williams.

“Well, Mccain who you interviewed earlier, he said ‘hey, do you want to make a water polo team? and I said what’s water polo. I had no idea what it was," said senior Nick Gaydos.

I got convinced by the guys, they said do you want to come out and play? We need some extra guys and i was like why not, let’s see where it goes, said senior Erich Hariston.

The first year was focused on learning the basics, and their lack of experience was obvious when they lost their first matchup against Birmingham Seaholm 21-0.

"It was rough, we only ended up winning one game that year," said Rice.

"We were all terrible at it… we had no idea what we were doing in the water," said Gaydos.

And to make matters worse, their coach had never even played the game before.

His experience was he read the rule book three times," said Gaydos.

"He just wanted to do it for us to help us have a team, said Rice.
"but we still had a lot of fun, we kept coming out the next two years"

The team improved to six wins last season, but improved even more once they welcomed their new coach Randi Cartwright.

"She actually played and was really good at water polo," said Williams.

"We’ve learned like shots and throws we’ve never even heard of before," said Gaydos.

"The distance between them and kinda where I wanted them to be was not great," said Cartwright. "But the boys are very coachable, they’re willing to learn and they want to get better."

"We started so poorly, it's amazing where we are now," said Gaydos.

"We’re still not winning a ton of games but other teams have had teams just so much longer than us," said Rice.

It’s just never been in our cards to be exceptionally great… but we try our best and that’s what its all about i guess," said Gaydos.

"It’s a family, I mean we have fun, every practice, every game, it’s a great time," said Hariston.

"For our skill level and what we've done, i think we've come a long way in the last three years, said Rice."

So here they find themselves, on senior night, sharing a few hugs and even shedding a few tears. As they look back at the legacy they left behind, they don’t have to look back at all. Their legacy is all around them.