Cal Water Polo, The Cutino Award and Greeks in New York City
BROOKLYN, NY. A festival hosted by Saints Constantine & Helen Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Brooklyn became a moment to reflect on the 2022 Cutino Award recipients, recently announced by the Olympic Club in San Francisco.
No, there is not a strong correlation between a lively Greek community event in New York City and the most prestigious award in American collegiate water polo. Nationality is in fact the only link. Cal’s Nikolaos Papanikolaou, awarded a Cutino last week as this year’s top male polo player, is Greek.
Cal’s Nikolaos Papanikolaou, the 2022 Cutino Award winner. Photo: Cal Athletics
A junior, Papanikolaou, led the Golden Bears to the 2021 NCAA men’s title, scoring two goals in Cal’s 13-12 win over USC. He is one of three Greek nationals on Head Coach Kirk Everist’s 2021 squad—a roster with a decided international flavor. Among 28 players, nine are foreign born; besides his countrymen Nikolaos Delagrammatikas and George Chalkias, Papanikolaou teamed with four Spaniards, a Croatian and a Brazilian.
Despite efforts to the contrary, the United States remains a land of opportunity for foreigners, an idea that NCAA polo— particularly women’s competition—encourages. National team players from Canada, Europe and Australia regularly matriculate at US universities to compete in women’s varsity play. Cal and USC—two of the four top teams in the final 2022 Collegiate Water Polo Association’s Varsity Women’s Poll—between them have a total of nine foreign players on their rosters. Sprinkled throughout the rosters of the CWPA’s Top Ten are other non-Americans, ensuring some of the world’s best competition.
On the men’s side, USC has historically been a leader in recruiting top foreign players; this year Head Coach Marko Pintaric’s roster included six players from outside our country, trailing Cal, it’s Pac 12 rival. With three foreigners, UCLA fielded a predominately American squad with one notable exception. Nicolas Saveljic, a graduate student from Montenegro, was a runner up to Papanikolaou this year after winning the Cutino last season. In fact, two foreign-born men have won in consecutive years for only the second time in the award’s 23-year history. In 2012 and again in 2013 while playing for Pacific, Balazs Erdelyi of Hungary was selected as the country’s best male polo athlete; in 2014 Konstantinos Genidounias of USC was tabbed as that year’s Cutino Award winner.
UCLA’s Nicolas Saveljic, the 2021 Cutino Award winner. Photo: UCLA Athletics
Genidounias, like Papanikolaou, is Greek; he was a member of the Greek national side that won silver in the 2020 Olympics last summer in Tokyo. Papanikolaou has also copped hardware in international competition; he led the Greek National Team to gold at 2018 Youth World Championships, while Delagrammatikas won gold at the 2017 FINA Junior World Championships.
Which is to say: Greek players in American are a potent polo force. At Fordham in the Bronx, Dimitris Koukias and George Papanikolaou were important contributors for a Rams’ polo side which earned an NCAA berth for the first time ever. On a roster of 20, St. Francis Brooklyn had more Greek players—three—than Americans (one). Wagner in Staten Island had no Greeks on its men’s squad of 24 but almost half (ten) were foreign born.
[Fan in the Stands: A Bronx Water Polo Tale]
Bringing the discussion back to Brooklyn, it was recently announced that Elektra Urbatsch, who attends Poly Prep High School, has committed to playing at UCLA. She might be born in America, but Elektra traces her heritage back to Greece through her mother, Nadia.
Perhaps there is something to a Greek festival in Downtown Brooklyn and NCAA water polo after all.