Achy Knees and All, Mike Schofield is Still A Fixture at the Navy Open

ANNAPOLIS, MD. In a return to the Navy Open for the first time since 2019 I was fortunate to run into Mike Schofield. Formerly The Naval Academy’s head water polo coach (1985 - 2013), for decades Schofield oversaw one of the country’s most dominant programs. His Midshipmen qualified for 14 NCAA men’s tournaments, still the most for any program from the East.

After Schofield stepped down from coaching, he made the unlikely switch from yelling at referees to being one. Given a penchant for verbal outbursts, some referees were bemused at this conversion; for Schofield it allows peace of mind regarding the sport he’s been involved with his entire life.

I’ve previously covered Schofield’s participation in the remarkable University of Pittsburgh teams from the 1970s. Also noteworthy is his nephew Logan Schofield, a member of the Bucknell men’s team that stuffed Harvard in the 2019 NCAAs, ending the Crimson’s run at a perfect season.

Following is Schofield unfiltered; explaining why Cal no longer comes to Navy for the Open, what it would take for talented foreigners to represent one of America’s service academies (not happening!), comparing the five-meter call to defending Michael Jordan and how an exciting, athletic sport is being overlooked by ESPN in favor of programming for cornhole.

- You started coaching at Navy in 1982 so you’ve been coming to the opening tournament at the Naval Academy for more than four decades! Do you feel the weight of those years?

My ankles, my knees, my hips and my back feel the weight of those years.

- In the past Cal and UCLA—currently the top two men’s NCAA programs—have come East to Annapolis.

Cal was here several times. Then I made some bad calls in a game with Cal and Kirk [Everist, Cal men’s coach]  doesn’t want to come back anymore because he’s still mad at me. [Laughs!] I mean, I was right but he’s still mad at me. 

- Navy, which used to be the dominant power in East Coast water polo, hasn’t won since you left. What do you attribute that to?

The level of play has improved from top to bottom. The influx of athletes from other countries has geometrically increased. The transfer portal, [a] Covid year… it’s a combination of the competitive landscape changing. [Navy] has been second a couple of times; they just have to beat the Fordhams and the Princetons and the Bucknells and the GWs [George Washington].

- Perhaps the Navy should also recruit foreign athletes…

It’s a little tough [USNA rules on international students]—but not impossible. You’d have to be sponsored by your country’s military and they’d have to have a relationship between their government and our government. In the rare case [Navy] could help the kid who came over from a place like Hungary, help them get their Green Card, then they could apply and theoretically get in. 

- A distinct feature of Navy water polo is that the coach is also a superior—and sometimes an officer—who can order the Midshipmen to do whatever they think is needed to succeed. Where else in America besides a service academy does a coach have that sort of sway over his athletes?

The people you get to work with here are as good as any you could ever ask for. They try real hard to do what you want. But they’re 18 – 23 [years old] and screw up just like everybody else. 

- And there’s a lot of them because everyone who attends the Naval Academy has to participate in a sport - and you’ve got to be able to swim!

At some level or another. If not, there’s a program for you, too.

- You have switched sides: from an animated coach who terrorized opponents and referees to donning the white suit and officiating the very teams you used to compete against.

It’s less emotional baggage. As an official you’re looking to do the best job you can. And improve where you messed up. Ed Reed is doing evaluations—and doing a great job of it for [the last] 13 - 14 years. 

You get feedback but you didn’t win and you didn’t lose. Every now and then you might determine the outcome of a game—hopefully you did it with the right call—but the emotional baggage is far lighter.

I try to keep a smile on my face and keep everything light. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t.

- From a coach’s perspective—and because you're not a coach anymore you can answer this—how do you feel about the change in the five meter rule? 

There’s a lot more of them. But the intent, the new way of calling penalties, I think helps the sport. Imagine Michael Jordan, going up for a dunk. Up until a few years ago you could have grabbed him by the arm and prevented him from putting the ball in the basket. 

In basketball you can still go up and block the shot—”get all ball”—and it’s legal. No foul. But if Jordan’s in the air and you hit something besides the ball they call a foul on you. 

Our sport had no such reality.

Water polo’s still in the dark ages when it comes to free movement of players, showcasing the skills and athleticism of the athletes. There’s still too much wrestling and holding and physical play. It’s harder to see it because 80% of their bodies are in the water.

Our sport still suffers from Neanderthal rules.

- And the NCAA has incorporated new 2-meter line rules, which worked well in the Olympics.

It’s good but it really doesn’t have a huge impact on the game, in my opinion. The grabbing guys from behind [for a five-meter penalty shot] rule is definitely a big step in the right direction. 

- it supersedes the advantage rule where referees determine if the player with the ball would have scored or not—a judgment call that would confuse anyone not familiar with the sport.

You were involved for many years with the Naval Academy Aquatic Club, the youth polo club associated with the Academy. Isabel Williams, from nearby (where) played NAAC last year became only the second East Coast athlete to win a Cutino Award as the nation’s best female polo player. How important is Navy youth polo to developing top athletes on this coast?

We have to stop being a sport that requires you to live in California if you want to play at the highest level. The goalie from UCLA [Lauren Steele] that won the [2024 NCAA] tournament, came over from Greenwich. She was in high school and [transferred to California]. Isabel left Severna Park, right up the street, when she was in high school for the same reason. 

[Cal Sweeps Cutino Awards: Nikolaos Papanikolaou, Isabel Williams Named Top Collegiate Water Polo Athletes]

What sport can survive when you’ve got lower income people who you want to include in your numbers, you want to get more people to grow the sport…. If they all have to go to one state to compete, how are you going to market that, how are you going to sell that to the other 49 states. Who can afford that on a macro level?

Lauren Steele’s parents could. Isabel Williams did but it cost them a lot. 

In swimming, you can live in New Hampshire and—if you have a great coach—you can make the Olympic team. It’s an individual sport so you don’t have to compete against other people like in water polo. 

If you really want the sport to be bigger and better you shouldn’t have to leave 49 states to go train in one.

- Is NAAC a place where that type of training can happen?

You still have to have money. Brad Schumacher, Wolf Wigo way back when… don’t you think I would have liked to have them here at The Naval Academy playing for the Midshipmen? Damn right I would have!

I’m still very good friends with both of them. One went to Stanford and one went to [University of Pacific] because they thought their chances of making the national team were much better out there. And they were right. 

Ashley Johnson from Princeton and Jovana Sekulic who’s there now; on the women’s side they are Exhibit A and Exhibit B. We don’t have [an athlete] who went to an Eastern men’s program that’s made an Olympic men’s team since the 60’s.

We need the sport to be good in as many states as possible, not just one. I’ve been in the sport since the mid-seventies, fifty years. It’s still California’s sport. Hawai’i’s got some good things going on…

- … and Texas, there’s some great developments happening there…

But the vision of our national governing body, in my opinion, has been horrendous. It’s held us back. And the irony is, most of those people are from Greenwich and Pittsburgh. 

- But now USAWP has a new CEO coming in, Jamie Davis who’s from Philadelphia. He’s an unknown quantity for water polo but, as Carl Quigley of St. Francis College has pointed out, when SFC wanted to start men’s volleyball, USA Volleyball, where Davis was the CEO, gave them start-up funding.

Maybe there is a silver lining in this new hire.

I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

The other thing that’s going to make or break our sport, with the economics of what’s about to happen with college sports, our national governing body, our collegiate programs, our age group programs—we’ve all got to be on the same page, or cornhole’s gonna be on TV and we’re not.