Keara Boan won silver with her Team Saskatchewan at the Senior NCL Championships in Calgary earlier this month. She's using the experience to boost the profile of the sport locally. (submitted photo)

By Alex Rawnsley

just keep swimming

‘I’m celebrating the little things:’ Nanaimo water polo player returning to the pool

May 18, 2024 | 8:52 AM

NANAIMO — Having previously given the sport away, a local water polo player’s experience at a recent tournament is bringing her back to the game.

Keara Boan represented her home province of Saskatchewan at the Senior NCL Championships, held in Calgary last weekend, May 10-12. Her team came away with a silver medal.

For Boan, who was a high level, international-calibre water polo player in her youth, it wasn’t a case of just diving back in to competition.

“I hadn’t played in about seven years, I took a very long break as I’d burnt myself out as a young athlete and decided to quit after high school, after I went to World’s (in 2016). I decided I wanted to play again, my dad is the assistant coach and I thought it would be a nice way to spend time with my dad.”

Once she got approval from the team’s head coach, Cyril Dorgigne who’d worked with Boan when she was growing up, she jumped back in the pool in a bid to return to the shape she was in during her teen’s.

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Now 25 years old, and not having played in eight years, it meant a lot of long, lonely swims at the Nanaimo Aquatic Centre.

“It was really hard. When I was in shape I took it for granted, I didn’t even realize I was in such good shape when I was young. I was swimming three kilometres a day, three times a week and that was the best I could do to accommodate getting into shape.”

All of the skills, however, returned almost immediately.

“The ball handling, the shooting, the defence all came back to me super quick, it was just the stamina, I could not keep up. Whenever I was playing [at the tournament], I would sub myself out when I was tired and the coach would put me back in next quarter or five minutes later, just to regulate my own energy.”

Boan chipped in with a couple of goals as Saskatchewan went through to the gold medal game undefeated, before falling to a team from Calgary in the final.

While most of the players were over 18, a handful were still in their earlier teens and put Boan in an unfamiliar spot of being somewhat of a mentor.

She said she had multiple opportunities to talk with the team’s younger members to offer up some life lessons she learned the hard way.

“I’m celebrating the little things [now] and I never did that when I was their age. It was always ‘I missed the net, I got the ball stolen, I played like s***’ when really there were probably 30 things that I did good in that game but I didn’t see it that way.”

The experience in Calgary gave Boan new perspective on a sport she’d given away after representing Canada on the world stage.

While she admits to a little regret, it’s not something which weighs her down.

“There were opportunities, I could have continued to train with the national team, I could have gone to schools in the United States with a scholarship and I could have gone to play pro somewhere in the world. Looking back…I can be gentle with myself and know as a teenager I didn’t have the tools and capacity to continue down that road.”

Returning to her new home of Nanaimo, where she’s lived for just over two years, after the tournament, Boan is keen to continue her reignited love of the game.

She’s been hired by the Nanaimo White Rapids Swim Club to coach in their summer water polo program, following in the footsteps of her father who has coached most of Boan’s life.

Boan said her goal is to combine small programs across the Island, namely in Nanaimo and Saanich, into an Island-based team.

“Try and maybe enter the NCL and be at a national level and compete with the other teams in Canada. I’m hoping that I can be a part of that in some way and be a part of the future of Vancouver Island water polo.”

Information, including registration, for the Nanaimo White Rapids Swim Club and their water polo program is available on the club’s website.

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