On The Record with Jorge Gonzalez, First of Puerto Rican Polo’s Greatest Generation

One of the best of Puerto Rico’s first generation of water polo athletes, Jorge Gonzalez was in the right place at the right time when polo got its start on the island. 18 years old in 1964 when Harry Hauck arrived from Michigan, Gonzalez was already a strong swimmer and accomplished wrestler due to his time competing in Connecticut prep schools and for the University of Puerto Rico.

Though he never wore his country’s colors in Pan American polo competition, Gonzalez helped establish the foundation for the island’s greatest generation of players—Emilio “Papo” Betancourt, Carlos and Raffi Gonzalez (no relation), Manfredo Lespier, Jorge Machicote, Tony Rios, Carlos Steffens and others—who formed the core of the 1979 squad that achieved the highest-ever finish in the Pan Ams.

His passing last February at the age of 75 was a devastating blow to the fraternity of Puerto Rican polo players whose passion for the sport is only exceeded by their devotion to their country. In June of 2020, I spoke with Gonzalez about his start with water polo, his tenure on the national team, and the extensive and interwoven—with the United States—history of polo on the island.

[Passages: Jorge Gonzalez, A Giant of Puerto Rican Water Polo, Dies at 75]

- You were on the Condado Club, a rival to the Caribe Hilton club that Harry Hauck started in 1964 when he arrived in Puerto Rico.

The Condado Beach Swimming Club asked me to swim for them. We formed a group there to play water polo as a team among ourselves in a 50-yard pool.

I went to a school out in Humacao (on the Eastern part of the island) in 1964. We played football there and water polo.

When I graduated I went to the University of Puerto Rico for swimming. But the water polo group still practiced in Condado. There was only the Condado Beach Hotel and the Caribe Hilton, where Harry used to [coach].

There was [also] the Ponce team. We had games between ourselves for a couple of years.

In 1965, Condado hired Tony Hiraldi, a Panamanian, to run its water polo program. He took over and put kids that were on the swimming team into different age groups.

In 1966, I was on the Puerto Rico wrestling team and the water polo team. But [that year] I had a hernia and missed the [Central American and Caribbean] Games; I had to be operated on, two weeks before the games. So, I couldn’t do water polo or wrestling.

A year later I decided [that] I would only play water polo, because it was too much.

- Did water polo start in Puerto Rico with Coach Hauck’s arrival?

When [Hauck] arrived, he had the Caribe Hilton. In the Condado, we had our own group. That’s when we started playing the different teams. There were three teams; the Hilton, Condado and Ponce.

When we started playing water polo in Condado, the Puerto Rican Swimming Association did not want anything to do with water polo. Nor did the swimming coaches, because [they] saw it taking away their swimmers. Swimming is boring. It’s back and forth, back and forth in the pool.

[In] water polo, you play but you don’t notice that you’re swimming, so you enjoy it.

- It sounds like you had to swim upstream to get polo going.

The thing is, we had the Condado Beach Club in the La Concha Hotel; at that time there were life guards in all the hotels who looked at [polo] as a sport. [One of] he life guards at the La Concha was a basketball star and he wanted to play. His brother played with us at the Condado, where he was a lifeguard.

We had a couple of others who did not want to swim but wanted to play water polo because of the interest in what we were doing. We used to practice at night; the hotel gave us permission to use the pool, so we were a group together playing at the beginning.

If they included us in the swimming association, we’d have to pay dues—which we didn’t have to do at the beginning. In the group we had at the Condado, we didn’t charge anyone anything until [the association] saw that we were getting more interest and that the hotel was sponsoring us.

We also gave water polo shows at the hotels; they had a buffet on the pool, and they would call us to make a show of swimming at night when they had the buffet. They would invite us to have a steak [afterwards].

We would go to the different hotels in the San Juan area. That’s how we got started.

 - Who was the basketball player and his brother who played water polo with you?

Betancourt.

- Papo Betancourt?

No, no. He came later. It was not the same family. Sammy Betancourt was a basketball star for the Guaynabo Mets.

We had a couple of life guards in different hotels. There was also Alejandro Franco, who was a swimmer—Tony Rios’ uncle—he was playing with us in Condado. Edwin Franco was a life guard at the Sheraton and he also played for Condado.

Later on there were players in Mayagüez—one of the players there was hired by the mayor of San Juan when they opened the Natatorium. Alfonso Fernandez was assigned to teach young swimmers to play water polo. He started a league there.

At that time, I was called to go there to help them get organized.

- You played until you were 65?

I played until I was 65 because they called us again… Miguel Velez, he’s the guy who Harry gave all the documents regarding the games and everything.

Have you spoken to Joey Ferraioli?

- Funny you should bring up Ferraioli. I have tried to speak with him because he also played for the New York Athletic Club teams that played in the Christmas Invitational.

He played for Puerto Rico but later on he moved to New York and played for the New York Athletic Club.

- Jorge Machicote told me that he was invited by Ferraioli to play on the NYAC squad. Clearly, he helped set the table for what became the great Puerto Rican polo teams of the 1970’s. What was it like when NYAC came to San Juan?

We had fun… there was a team also: Lower Moreland from Pennsylvania. They also came to a couple of the Christmas Invitationals. They would fly down and stay for the Invitational.

There was another person who involved in water polo in Puerto Rico and his name was [Don] Atwood. [He was in] Mayagüez at the university.

We played in the league and he was the coach for Mayagüez when we played the University of Puerto Rico.

- What was your impression of Hauck, who was your coach on the national team?

I went to a couple of tournaments, and what happened was, at that time, there was no substitution. You had to play the whole game. Once you get in you only get substitutions at the quarters.

That was one of the main problems we had. Every year the parents wanted their younger kids… we had our group, the older guys. I went to the Pan American Games with 16-year-old guys who didn’t make it into the pool. They made the team so we had to play the complete game against team at that time that had older guys, like the Cubans and the Colombians.

I had to play the whole quarter of the whole game. But the time we got to the fourth quarter, we were dead. Harry would put sometimes in one quarter all these smaller, younger guys who couldn’t do anything and we’d get behind by three goals. By that time we lost the game [because we couldn’t recover].

I went to indoors at the Hall of Fame Pool [in Florida] and we were winning all the games, then Harry took some of our better players out and the game was tied at the end. The referee was the father of two of the players on our “B” team. We warned that next day if we won we’d be in first if we lost we’d be in third place.

We were so down from [the previous game] that we lost the game by one goal.

We came in third at the [1968 Men’s Junior Indoor National Water Polo AAU Championships]. It was in Fort Lauderdale and I have whole list of who went. West Virginia, New York Athletic Club I think.

In 1963-64 when it started, we had a tournament here Jamaica and Puerto Rico. That was one of the first international games we played. Again, all the [Puerto Rican] players were young and they gave us a beating.

That was built up to ’66. For the [1970’s CAC Games] we went to Detroit. We played Michigan State and a couple of other water polo teams at that time. There were not that many teams playing college but Harry had connections in the Detroit area, and that’s how we got to go there. We stayed at families’ homes and we also went to Barbados when we started. We would stay in people’s homes in Barbados and played by the Holiday Inn in the ocean.

- How was the trip to Detroit? Harry mentioned that he took a team there in 1968.

I was the older one. I was 24, 25. It was fine. Remember, I went for three years in a school in Connecticut, I swam and played baseball and went all over New England with the swimming team, wrestling, football and baseball.

- What was younger player’s experience with the trip to the Midwest?

They enjoyed going out there. The thing is, they couldn’t go out at night. I could go to a bar or anywhere I wanted. There were two or three who were older.

- Were you part of the ’71 team that went to Colombia?

Since I came back from Central American Games in Panama—that was 1970—there was 1971 that they had the games in Colombia. At that time, I was asked: Do you want to play? I said sure.

Then you have to start practicing from 8 to 10 o’clock in the morning and from 4:30 - 6:30 in the afternoon. I had to work [and] nobody had paid me anything to play.

I asked: What do you want me to do? They said: Quit your job. I said you’re crazy! I’ll play in the league here but take those kids and play them and take them to the Pan Am Games. I quit the national team, and later on I started sailing, and I was on the sailing team for 1979 at the Pan American Games.

- What was your impression of the 1979 Games, held in San Juan?

At that time, I was sailing. With Alejandro Franco, who was also a teammate of mine in the Condado water polo team, I sailed in the USA in 1979 at the Antigua [Sailing Week]. I raced with Juan Torruella, a federal judge. We raced a couple of times in the States in Miami and Long Island.

Then I quit.

Tony Rios was there since the beginning. I’m talking back to 1966. He was there with us playing. We had a game against the Jamaican team in ’63, ’64 or ’65. I will have to look at my file. I have all the Christmas Invitational brochures. I have when we went to Panama, when we went to Detroit, when we went to Florida to play in the Hall of Fame pool.

We went to Barbados and played [there] twice. All the Christmas Invitationals from 1968 to 1972. Then what happened is the league started to decay because there were only four teams. At that time, the older guys got together, we got Steffens to play, Carlos, myself, Papo Ruiz and a couple of other ones and we got into a league.

We lost the tournament by one goal; we had five or six teams.

The thing was—and still is—the Puerto Rican Swimming Association is only interested in the swimmers. Water polo for them is nothing.

- Despite having Manuel de Jesus—whose father, Dr. Jesus, was a prominent FINA member—as a supporter of Puerto Rican water polo, the sport still does not get the support it deserves.

They were more interested in the swimmers, and they saw a competition between the water polo players and the swimmers. A lot of the swimmers wanted to go play water polo and quit swimming. [The federation] did not back them up. Even the coaches did not want them to be playing.

- If support from the federation is lacking, can water polo be revitalized on the island?

They could if they wanted to—if they could get the pools. We now have three or four teams playing—and most of them are playing with the older guys. You have Loyola, you have Encantada… the Ponce team dropped out.

Mayagüez had a team and the University of Puerto Rico played in the league—they just dropped out.

When Puerto Rico was good a few years ago at the Pan Am Games, they pushed women’s water polo. But then it died down because that was the only group, and when the girls aged out, they had no more players. And they used to play at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez.

- There’s the ongoing challenge of polo programs getting pool time from the swimmers.

Pools are scarce. Especially pools to play water polo. You only find two or three suitable for playing water polo. You have no interest from the swimming association to get pools back. It used to be the Condado Beach, Caribe Hilton, the La Concha Hotel, the Sheraton—all the hotels in my time were interested in having us [play] to show the tourists. And, there were lifeguards in those hotels, players—they wanted to show off.

When they closed the Condado Beach Hotel—the hotel business [didn’t] want to do water polo. What happen was the hotels at that time were like country clubs. Also, the manufacturing plants in Puerto Rico, the managers who were running the plants, they and their families had moved to Puerto Rico [from the States]. They looked for a club that could sponsor swimming and water polo.