Water Polo, Swimming
Favorite athlete: Kobe Bryant
Favorite team: New York Yankees
Favorite memory competing in sports: Winning Flight 3 in the 2019 Beast of the East Water Polo tournament.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Getting a bloody nose during Water Polo Junior Olympics last year and needing to have a tampon shoved up my nose because my nose was too big for the normal medical nose swab.
Music on playlist: Classic Rock
Future plans: Orthopedic Surgeon with a focus in prosthetics
Words to live by: “Focus on the little things in life because will end up making the biggest difference.”
One goal before turning 30: Becoming a part of an Orthopedic medical practice.
One thing people don’t know about me: Although I am only 6'3" my wingspan is 6'9" which definitely helps in water polo.
By GORDON GLANTZ
One look at Souderton senior Kristian Stanczewski - standing at 6-3 tall and with a wingspan of 6-9 - and the natural first impression would be that he must be a basketball player.
Instead, he takes that near-freakish physical attribute into the natatorium as a scoring machine for the water polo team.
But, he does so while inspired by the work ethic of a basketball icon, the late great Kobe Bryant.
“I just like how he worked super hard and was loyal to his team,” said Stanczewksi, who did the mandatory tee-ball stint and played soccer through middle school before being exclusively “in the water” at the high school level. “I just liked his work ethic. I heard this story where another basketball player walked into the gym and Kobe Bryant was already there, working out. Three hours later, the other guy was leaving. When (Bryant) was asked why he was still there, he just said something like, ‘to show you that you have to keep working harder.’ That’s what I strive to be as well – to be the best that I can and to work as hard as I can.”
A native of Livingston, N.J., Stanczewski took to the water like, well, the proverbial fish to water.
“I started out swimming,” he said. “That was when I lived in New Jersey. Then water polo got big. We moved to Pennsylvania. My dad played club in college, and he loved the sport. When I was 8, I started playing (organized) water polo.”
And it was love at first splash.
“I definitely knew right away,” he said. “I loved the game – every aspect of it.”
Like Bryant with basketball, his natural ability for water polo was obvious. Like Bryant, he knew that natural ability alone would not be enough.
“I would say I had natural talent with it, but I also kept working at it all the time,” said Stanczewski. “I figured that there are also other people who have that kind of talent, so that meant working at it was what was going to set me apart. I enjoy the game, so I just want to get as good as I can be at it.”
For Souderton water polo coach Joe Hay, a transplanted West Virginian who jokes that he was “drafted” into coaching the team before he really understood the nuances of the sport, having the chance to coach a complete-package athlete like Stanczewski equates to waking up in the morning and finding a chunk of gold under your pillow.
“He’s a super intelligent kid,” said Hay, who currently has Stanczewski in one of his AP math classes. “It translates into his game. He is fundamentally sound. He is big, strong and very athletic. On top of that, he goes the extra mile. He knows the fundamentals and executes them.
“He has a bit of swagger, but yet he isn’t cocky. He is confident, but still relaxed.”
Thunderstruck
Even though water polo is his primary sport, Stanczewski can’t just turn off his competitive juices when competing for the Souderton swim team, a second life which also serves to keep him in shape – and his swimming skills sharp – in the scholastic offseason.
“It’s kind of a bit of both,” he said. “I want to try my best in swimming, too. I’ve done it forever. I wasn’t going to stop. But, right now, my goal is water polo. My goal, for swimming, is to stay in shape but also work hard at it.”
The lover of classic rock bands like AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses has a competitive nature that comes through more after rare losses than after victories, according to Hay.
“We’ve been doing really well this year, but we had a one-goal loss to North Penn, who is our biggest rival,” said Hay. “Kristian wasn’t happy about it, but he doesn’t stew over it. He goes home and watches film and then comes back and tells us what he saw in the film.”
The coach added: “If you had a team of all Kristians, you wouldn’t have to do much.”
Getting a “LEG” Up
If anything matched Stanczewski’s love for water polo at a young age, it was playing with LEGO toys. It was a passion that quickly morphed into a career aspiration of being an orthopedic surgeon with a focus on prosthetics.
“I had it narrowed down since I was really young, since like first grade,” he recalled. “I always liked playing with LEGOs. I played with them all the time. I just liked seeing how stuff works. It was just a matter of the medical side or the engineering side. I decided on medical so that I could interact with people.”
With that career focus in shape, academics were never an issue for Stanczewski, who takes mostly AP classes and maintains a weighted GPA in the range of 4.3.
He plans to major in pre-med at Wagner, and did not need the water polo coach to plead his case there. The same held true at other schools, but COVID-19 made choices limited.
“It was a lot different,” said Stanczewski. “I had a normal tour (at Wagner). I met with the coach and everything. But, at other schools, it was hard. No one is really bringing anyone on because seniors get an additional year and freshmen are taking a gap year. They didn’t really have any availability, so it was really hard searching for teams.”
But all’s well that ends well, as he feels he found the right fit in Staten Island, right in the shadow of where it all began in Northern New Jersey.
“I feel like I really had a good connection with the coach,” said Stanczewski. “I really liked meeting with him. And, they seemed to have a really strong team dynamic. I liked that about it, and I also liked the school in general. I was looking for a smaller school, so that I could focus on my schoolwork as well. They had a couple of spots open, so I was fortunate enough to get one.
“I’m looking forward to it. I’m just ready for the next level of competition. It’s going to be such a new challenge”
One thing is for sure, Wagner’s coaching staff will be getting a coachable player.
“He was coachable as a freshman,” affirmed Hay. “And he improved by leaps and bounds every year since then.”
Taking Charge
Once Pennsylvania went into the Yellow Phase of the pandemic shutdown, Stanczewski saw green and began inviting school teammates – and club teammates from his Bux-Mont squad – to his home pool for workouts.
This came after Stanczewski scratched his lifelong itch to tinker by building his own regulation size water polo goal and putting it to use.
“I started having people come over, and we just practiced – people from my school team and anyone from my club team who lived close enough," he said. "I was just trying to help everyone improve under these conditions, since no one was able to practice at their schools.”
While Souderton has been able to have a semblance of a season, it is not the senior campaign of Stanczewski’s dreams, especially after a junior year that including a championship trophy at the Beast of the East Tournament.
This year, there are no weekend tournaments, which cuts the number of chances to play way down, an ancillary effect of which is cutting into Stanczewski’s shot to become the school’s all-time scoring leader (he scores around 5-6 a game but it is not uncommon for him to net 9-10 goals in an outing).
He scored more than 50 goals as a sophomore and 118 as a junior, but the shortened season may keep him from the top of the all-time list.
“It definitely will affect it,” he said. “We only get to play like nine games this year, although we just heard there will be a postseason, so that was good news.
“But this year was affected significantly. We don’t have any tournaments. We had those all the time, and those are always so much fun because we get to play new teams that we don’t always get to play.”
All In The Family
The Stanczewski dinner table may be a bit different than most others around America. It’s inevitable where the conversation will lead. Father, also Kris (but not Kris, Sr.), was an avid water polo player himself who introduced the sport to his eldest son.
“We talk a lot about water polo, especially when it’s during the season, but we will talk about other stuff – 'How was your school day?' and all that – also,” said Stanczewski, who gives a lot of credit to his mom, MaryBeth, for being the wind beneath his fins.
“My mom is always my biggest fan and pushes me to be the best person that I can be in every aspect of my life,” said Stanczewski. “Ever since I was young, she has always been cheering for me and helped. She is always doing everything for me, especially now more than ever. She is taking time out of her day to stream our water polo games because some parents are not allowed to come to games because of the coronavirus.”
Meanwhile, the Kris-to-Kris torch has been passed on to younger brothers, Will (9th grade) and Blake (8th).
“The best thing about Kristian might be that he has two younger brothers,” said Hay. “We have some younger players on the team, and he works with all the younger players. He has a pool at this house, and has kids working with him as much as he can. You can tell he really loves it, and gets satisfaction out of passing it on. He’s just a great kid.”
Will is a varsity-junior varsity swing player, while high hopes are held for Blake as well. Nothing would make their older brother happier than seeing them become even better versions of himself.
“I hope so,” he said. “I’m helping them learn what I know, and try to pass down what I know. Will has made tremendous strides just throughout his freshman year this year. He swings, playing both varsity and JV, and he is holding his own.”
The message, really, goes back to that of Kobe Bryant working for hours in the gym. Stanczewski see believes that the little things in life make the biggest difference.
“In real life, there are so many little life lessons that we all take for granted,” he said. “It all can all make a big difference in your life.”
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