Charlie Gulotta and The Unbelievable Story of Bishop Loughlin Water Polo

Editors Note: This is one of a series of interviews with individuals who were part of the Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School water polo team from the 1960s. A key consideration: Loughlin has not had a polo team for decades, making the success the Lions achieved, winning the 1964 AAU Junior Water Polo National Championship, that much more notable. This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.

On the occasion of their 60th anniversary reunion, members of the Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School gathered last weekend in New York City. But a special group of Lions had much more to celebrate than their fellow graduates: in 1964 this group improbably captured the AAU Junior Water Polo Championship.

Charlie Gulotta was there for all of it, starting in 1960 as a freshman recruited by Loughlin coach Harry Benvenuto to learn polo in the basement of the Central Brooklyn YMCA. From there Gulotta and his teammates barnstormed the country, developing their polo skills against players significantly bigger—and older —than they.

Decades later, Gulotta is able to recall off a who’s who of the essential players in Eastern aquatics—coaches, administrators and athletes whose success was born out of effort and friendship.

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- You were part of a group of high school athletes from Bishop Loughlin—teenagers who enjoyed an amazing run of success playing water polo.

Absolutely! And we attribute it to Harry, our coach. Harry lived in Williamsburg. He had polio, so he had to swim. He was Director of Aquatics at the Brooklyn Central YMCA and the swimming coach for Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School.

He was also the coach at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute—a college that is now part of NYU. [Tandon School of Engineering]. 

In 1960, the freshman swim group at Loughlin consisted of seven guys: me, Eddie Haggerty, Kenny Schreifels, Billy Harris, Dennis Christy, Jimmy Mottle and Tommy Walsh. We swam together for Harry starting in the fall of 1960. 

Harry saw us as opponents for his Brooklyn Polytechnic water polo team to scrimmage against, a bunch of young guys who were good swimmers. We started playing water polo in 1960 against college teams— freshmen playing against college teams. 

It was an unbelievable experience. There was college water polo in the city; St. Francis had a program as did Harvard, MIT. Yale had a big program; West Point had a team. We went to Yale University to play in a tournament. We went to West Point to play against them.

Water polo is a game based upon teamwork; you can’t win a water polo game as an individual. Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, Spain; the reason those countries are successful is [athletes] start playing together when they’re five years old—they know everything about their fellow players. 

The reason the United States has never won an Olympic Gold medal—except in 1904 when there were only U.S. teams—is because in Europe sports revolve around clubs. People start playing water polo at age five and play with the same guys until they’re 30. In the United States our guys don’t start playing together until they’re 17.

The key to [Loughlin’s] success was we all learned to play together and had positions that complemented each other. I was a lefty, a swimmer and a driver. Dennis Christy was a righty, a swimmer and a driver. Bill Harris was our hole forward and a tenacious son-of-a-bitch. 

In the backfield we had Eddie Haggerty, Kenny Schreifels and Jimmy Mottle. But our secret weapon was our goalie, Tommy Walsh. He was unbelievable—and gave us the confidence to make fast breaks down the pool. Dennis and I would receive [long] passes from him. 

- How did the Loughlin team go from just learning water polo to national champions?

At Yale University—and this I find amazing—I was able to beat Don Sholander to the ball in a swim off. Schollander was a five-time Olympic Gold medal winner, but he had no ball sense. In water polo we could beat guys like Schollander, Steve Clark, Ed Townsend; they didn’t have ball sense or teamwork. 

Over four years we developed into national champions. We were at West Point in 1962 when Douglas MacArthur gave his farewell address to the corps of cadets. We were sitting at the training table—every Saturday morning there was a parade of cadets at West Point, and we were there for a water polo tournament. 

Harry was a great supporter, and we were able to do this because of an amazing situation. The Brooklyn Central YMCA had two pools; an adult pool on the third floor and in the basement was a 20 yard, shallow end kids’ pool. That’s where we practiced and played—and we did it naked! I don’t know why; that was a YMCA tradition. 

Harry had a bamboo pole and he would beat us to make us go faster. Nowadays you would get arrested [for that] but in the Sixties it was okay. 

We were invited to the 1964 Olympic Trials. Unfortunately, Dennis Christy and I couldn’t attend because we were being recruited by the Air Force. We went to Colorado; Eddie Haggerty, Billy Harris, Tommy Walsh and some other guys played at the Olympic Trials.

Many of us went on to play at the New York Athletic Club; Dennis Christy, Tommy Walsh, Billy Harris, Eddie Haggerty went to St. Francis College in Brooklyn, where Carl Quigley has an unbelievable legacy. What he did was magic. 

Eddie Haggerty didn’t last that long; he went to Vietnam. Tommy Walsh didn’t last, he became a steamfitter and a tradesman. Billy and Dennis played together at St. Francis College, along with Lou Gioa. I think we met him at the New York AC. [St. Francis] had Charlie Schaem as a coach and Billy’s brother Charlie, who also went to St. Francis and is in their Hall of Fame. Charlie Harris helped Harry to coach us.  

It was a magical experience that gave all of us self-confidence to do unbelievable things later in life. It certainly built up my self-confidence. I went to the Air Force Academy for a year; Dennis Christy went for six months. We came back to New York. Dennis went to St. Francis and played with Billy; I went to Fordham University and played under Fran Judge, and we all played at the New York Athletic Club, even during college.

Tommy Walsh played, and Billy and Dennis and me; that’s where we were brought together with some world-class players: Ervin Veg, Steve Molnar, Hans Smit. We won eight national championships and we tried out for the 1968 Olympics. Some of us went to the training camp. But they took the whole team from El Segunda, whose head coach, Urho Saari, had two of his athletes on the team.

- The one who accomplished more in polo than any of you was Bill Harris.

I worked for IBM so I moved around the country. I stopped playing for the New York AC but I lived in California and played for other clubs. Billy stayed around and worked it. In the ‘90s he switched from being a player to a coach—he went to Greenwich and became the high school girls’ coach. He was under the tutelage of Terry Lowe [long-time Greenwich High School boy’s coach]. They worked closely together and that helped Billy develop his coaching skills. Terry is an awesome coach who was there a long time with swimming and water polo teams.

[Fordham’s Bill Harris on New York City Water Polo: “We Just Had Fun!”]

I transferred to Fordham and graduated in 1968. The Rams had Ned Kelly, Chris Judge and other great guys: the Iannuzzi brothers [Dan and Joel], Kevin Sullivan, Kola Romano—there were a bunch of people who have kept Fordham water polo alive. In the early 2000s Billy became the head coach; I’d talk with him from time to time. I was happy he was at my alma mater. He complained he didn’t have enough money to compete with the California teams and teams [in the East]: Harvard, MIT—teams that give out scholarship money to athletes.

He’s chipped away over the years—Kola Romano and [other] alumni helped. The administration recognized that and started contributing funds, and he started to recruit a lot of people. I think he learned that from Carl Quigley, who was a genius in recruiting players from Eastern Europe to play at St. Francis College.

Billy chipped away at it and over the years he got better and better and the team got better and better and the university got more involved and the alumni got more involved, then he got Brian Bacharach to be his assistant—Brian brought some great knowledge from California

It’s mind-boggling what has happened. Fordham University is ranked fifth in the country with UCLA and Stanford and Cal Berkeley.

This weekend happens to be our 60th high school reunion from Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School so all of the team is going to Clinton Hill in Brooklyn on Saturday. Since the New York Athletic Club [would] scrimmage Fordham University on Friday night, I thought it would be a good idea to broaden the weekend.

 Since so many of the team will be turning out, to meet at the Fordham vs. NYAC game and recognize Billy. We’ll give some scenarios of playing with Billy and observations of how he’s developed and then give a certificate that his wife Dorothy has created.

- The camaraderie that existed among your Bishop Loughlin teammates is remarkable for any sport but does not exist currently for New York City water polo.

Let me crystalize it for you in a quote from General Douglas MacArthur:

​​“On the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that on other days, on other fields will bear the fruits of victory.”

Certainly for me, polo helped tremendously. But let me go back a little bit. The swimming culture in New York City was fostered by Joe Stetz and Dick Abrahamson. 

Mr. Abrahamson ran AAU swimming, and his son, Richard Abrahamson, was a great swimmer. He helped us a lot because we used to swim in all the city pools, like at the Bernard Baruch Houses or at the pool on the Lower East Side. There was the Queens Boy’s Club in Astoria, coached by Henry Pferr.

There were other people who helped shape us—Dennis Christy, me and some of the other [Loughlin] guys before we got to the New York Athletic Club. These guys were instrumental with the city because they ran meets everywhere. 

The mission of the New York Athletic Club from 1868 was to support and inspire amateur athletics. Swimming was always instrumental in that. The book “The Waterman” about Charlie Daniels goes dramatically into the history of swimming in New York. 

The swimming coach for the New York Athletic Club, Bill Gay.

Swimming was an instrumental part of the New York Athletic Club’s mission; water polo overshadowed it for a while in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. But now the NYAC has numerous Olympic swimming champions from the [Paris Olympics]. 

In the 30’s they built all these pools, like at Brooklyn Tech—they’re all the same, white tile, 25 yards, four lanes. I started swimming at Brooklyn Tech in the 8th grade under Thomas Booras. That helped me tremendously on Saturday mornings when St. Francis Prep used to swim. 

There always was a culture; I don’t know what happened to it. You have Asphalt Green with their culture. The Baruch Houses pool, I think that still exists [now known as Hamilton Fish Recreation Center]. They renovated the McCarren Park Pool in Greenpoint. And the Metropolitan Pool [in Williamsburgh]; we swam there a lot. 

- Your team was unified in their purpose because of friendship and circumstance.

Our parents were very supportive. Billy Harris’ mother Edith was tenacious. She was the one who got Abe Stark, the Brooklyn Borough President, to give us a [proclamation] in 1964. It goes back to the fact that water polo is a team sport; you need teamwork. It’s very different from swimming; they complement one another. Swimming is an individual sport where you learn individual discipline. In water polo you push yourself because of your teammates. You go above and beyond because when he’s down you support him and when you’re down he supports you. 

It’s a wonderful skill that’s great for business; how you work together as a team—at least I found that to be true.