Water Polo, Bowling
Favorite athlete: Ryan Howard
Favorite team: Philadelphia Phillies
Favorite memory competing in sports: This season has been really amazing to watch the team come together after losing 4 out of our 7 starters last year and not being able to use our pool due to the tornado that ripped off the pool roof a year ago. We have had a lot of people step up, including myself. We have even won a few upset games this season and we look forward to hopefully making states.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: One day during a practice my freshman year my friends and I were joking around and I said “I never get hurt.” This was a major lie considering it seems as if the universe is against me and I always somehow get hurt. I went underwater, and when my head popped back up, I was hit right in the face by a ball and my eye swelled up immediately. My teammates and coach still won’t let it go to this day.
Music on playlist: My pump-up song before every water polo game this season is “Mr. Perfectly Fine” by Taylor Swift. I also listen to a lot of Mac Miller and Tyler the Creator.
Future plans: I would like to attend a local college and get my master degree in social work, play club water polo, and possibly bowling.
Words to live by: “No pain, no gain.”
One goal before turning 30: I would like to study abroad during college.
One thing people don’t know about me: I’m actually pretty good at singing and drawing.
By Craig Ostroff
No one could have foreseen the season that Lucy Ruppel is enjoying as a senior driver on the Upper Dublin girls’ water polo team … not even Ruppel herself.
In fact, back when she was preparing to first step through the doors of Upper Dublin High School, Ruppel envisioned her future athletic successes would come on the grass fields, not in the pool.
“I had played soccer, and softball was my main sport when I was younger,” Ruppel said. “In all honesty, I hate swimming, even to this day. I tried doing high school swimming, I tried during Covid for the social aspect, just to be with other people and to be part of a team. But swimming just wasn’t for me.
“I had no interest in playing water polo coming into high school. A week before preseason, the high school team had a scrimmage that was more like a practice. My friend Emma (McCarthy) brought me and told me, ‘You’re going in.’ I was thrown into the game with no experience at all. Even after that, it took a week before I figured, ‘All right, I guess I’ll try it.’
“If you were to tell me then that I’d still be playing water polo, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
Yet here she is, a captain on a Cardinals’ squad that came into this week with an 8-4 record. In her first full season as a starter, Ruppel has seen her playing time dramatically increase, and she and the Cardinals are reaping the benefits. Ruppel had accumulated 24 goals in her first three seasons in the pool. A dozen games into her final campaign, she’s already found the net 35 times.
But Ruppel’s importance to the team extends far beyond the scorebook.
“Lucy has been outstanding for us this year,” said Cardinals’ water polo coach Chris Ianni. “She’s developed into a great leader. She’s taken the role and run with it. She provides positive energy. She’s worked hard these past 4 years and developed into a varsity starter last year, and she’s improved even more this year. She’s smart about the game, picks up on everything, listens well. She has a great balance of being able to work hard while also providing positive energy—she’s our hype machine, she will energize the team, make sure people are cheering, getting excited for the game.”
Ruppel has adapted admirably to an expanded role in the pool. There’s no secret as to how she achieved her success … it took a lot of work.
“I’ve always been the bench player who subs into a game,” she said. “Before this season, the most I played in a game was two consecutive quarters, so I was thrown into this season on a team that lost four of seven starters and with the expectations that there would likely be no subs.
“All the close games this season, I’ve had to play every second. And I’m not the fastest swimmer, so it was challenge at first. We had a huge game against Pennridge early in the season and we won by one point, but I played the whole game. It was the first time I’d done that, and I had 3 goals in that game. That was pretty big for me in terms of a confidence boost.
“I really worked in the offseason. I played club water polo for the first time, did a lot of shooting, which really wasn’t my specialty. My shooting beyond 6 meters has really improved. I think my defense has become really good. I’ve worked really hard to get to where I am now. From not knowing how to do eggbeater to stay afloat when I first started, to being one of the team’s scoring leaders, I worked my butt off.”
Her hard work and improvement have paid off not only for the senior captain, who has also logged some time on the defensive end of the pool, but the ripples can be felt among the rest of the team as well.
“Lucy knew what she needed to do coming into this season,” Ianni said. “She wants to be at that level and she’s doing everything she can to get there. She’s a big part of the reason why the team has been so successful. We don’t have one or two stud players, so we need everyone on the team playing at the highest level. She creates that synergy, helps the team work together in the water.”
*****
Ruppel’s journey of adapting and overcoming obstacles mirrors the path that the water polo team has traveled the last several years. Ruppel’s sophomore season was played in empty natatoriums during the Covid pandemic. Her junior year was thrown into disarray when Hurricane Ida hit the area on the first day of the 2021-22 school year and a tornado severely damaged the roof of the natatorium. As a result, all Upper Dublin home games were played in opposing teams’ pools, and practices were held at local swim clubs and other school districts’ pools.
Ruppel’s leadership was on full display in the wake of the damage, as she stepped up to help raise funds and to make sure her teammates and neighbors were safe and secure.
“Lucy was one of the first kids who was asking, ‘What can we do?’” Ianni said. “She was working with the Sunny Willow summer swim club manager putting together donations, aid for those that needed. She always has other people’s interests at heart. We had one girl and one boy hit pretty hard, and that’s tough to overcome. Lucy played a big part making sure she was getting everyone together and being there for each other.”
Ruppel helped organize the Sunny Willow Storm Aid Fund, going around the area collecting cash or Venmo donations and purchasing gift cards to donate to the Red Cross for families impacted by the hurricane. In all, around $500 was raised to help those in need.
And just as they came through for those in need, several local school districts came through for the Upper Dublin squad that was without a home.
“There was a sense of, ‘What are we going to do now? Where will we practice? Where will we play?’” Ruppel said. “Very quickly, Wissahickon stepped up, Oreland stepped up. Things went from very sad to very hopeful last season.”
That hope has carried over into Ruppel’s senior year. The Cardinals are finally back in their home pool. They are finally back in front of parents, friends, and fans. And they intend to enjoy every moment of it, both in the pool and out.
“It’s a major relief to be back in our home pool,” Ruppel said. “We were so tired of playing our home games in rivals’ pools. They didn’t feel like home games. It’s so nice to walk into our own locker room.”
In addition to stepping up to fill the holes left by graduation, a prime focus for the captains and seniors has been to make sure team chemistry and morale are high. Ruppel’s ability to connect with her teammates has been critical to developing that chemistry.
“Lucy has a good sense for how other people are feeling,” Ianni said. “She’s always thinking about her teammates. She encourages them. She works with them, calms them down when they need it, lifts them up when they need it, and helps them stay focused in the water. It’s her work ethic that she brings and that positive energy. She’s able to strike a balance. She’s always smiling, laughing, cracking jokes, but she also knows when to get serious.”
“The captains and the seniors worked hard to create a friendly, fun vibe, and it’s contagious,” Ruppel said. “We wanted to be fair and welcoming for everyone, so that win or lose, we can all have a fun season. I am in no way, shape, or form quiet. I am the first person you hear screaming and losing their voice. And I want everyone else to have fun like that.
“I think it’s how I’ve always been. I want to major in social work in college. I love helping people and seeing the positives in things, especially these past few years. There’s nothing better than making someone smile.”
*****
The past two seasons have provided an additional reason for Ruppel to smile, as she’s been able to share the pool and the team’s success with her younger sister Abby. This season, the senior-sophomore duo has accounted for nearly 60 goals and 100 points so far this season.
“I think I tried to boss Abby around when she came up as a freshman,” Ruppel said with a laugh. “This season, I don’t think we’ve argued once. If anything, we’ve gotten closer. I couldn’t be happier having her on the team.”
She’s also happy she’s able to see her sister—and the rest of her friends—back in the hallways of Upper Dublin High School. Ruppel admits she occasionally struggled maintaining focus while remote schooling during the pandemic and in the wake of the hurricane. She’s taking classes this year that she truly enjoys while she works on narrowing down her college options. She also serves as a delegate on the board of the school’s National Honor Society, and she remains a part of the softball team as the squad’s manager. She’s coordinating a senior project benefitting Stomp Out Stigma, which provides mental health awareness, and Abbey’s Bakery, a local organization that promotes mental health awareness and suicide prevention resources in the area.
Ruppel isn’t just a one-sport athlete, either. Once water polo season ends, she’ll be polishing up her bowling ball for one last season on the lanes for Upper Dublin.
“Bowling was a random thing I picked up last year that it turns out I was pretty good at,” said Ruppel, who finished fifth at Suburban Ones last year. “I think the most excited person about that was my grandpop, he’s a huge bowler. So my life has become water polo and bowling. I guess I just have a strong right arm.”
That right arm could be a major factor if the water polo team makes a return to the PIAA State Tournament this year. It would be the first time during Ruppel’s high school career that the girls’ team will have made states, and it’s brass ring that she and her teammates are looking to grab.
“In all four years here, we’ve never made states,” Ruppel said. “The year before my freshman year was the last time we made it. Every year there’s a state play-in tournament that we go to and every year it’s on Homecoming and we end up losing, so we miss Homecoming and we miss states. This year we can go to Homecoming, and we’re on the path to being top three in the league, which would send us to states. It would be a huge accomplishment if we make it this year.”
But no matter where this season ends, Ruppel is looking forward to making memories with friends and teammates. And after she’s played her last game in the pool for Upper Dublin, Ruppel hopes she’s remembered for her team spirit and her desire to bring the team members together. As far as her play in the pool … Ruppel hopes she’s remembered as someone who may not have looked like a typical water polo player, but who played as hard, as smart, and as aggressively as anyone else in the pool.
“A lot of girls who play water polo are big, muscular girls with a long reach,” Ruppel said. “I’m very small. I’m 5-2. When I stand next to them, I look like a puppy.
“There are a lot of people with a lot longer arm length. So I try to be a little shifty, be a little sneaky how I get the ball, draw a foul. No one expects when a 5-2 girl comes hurling at you and slams the ball in your face!”
