BRIDGEPORT, Pa. — 2024 Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) Hall of Fame member/former Princeton University goalkeeper Peter Sabbatini will present the February 5 “Coaches Corner” episode on goalkeeping.
A webinar series on Zoom to help club teams have the resources and confidence to run productive practices throughout their season, archives of each “Coaches Corner” discussion are available under the Membership tab of the CWPA website for later viewing.
All presentations are open for collegiate club, varsity, fans, officials and the general public to view at no cost.
Sabbatini replaces former McKendree University men’s and women’s head coach Colleen Lischwe in covering the topic.
Peter Sabbatini, CWPA Hall of Fame Member
Former Princeton University Goalkeeper
Wednesday, February 5 / 8:00 p.m. Eastern
- Zoom Link: CLICK HERE
- Meeting ID: 883 0011 9660
- Passcode: 8tHs9e
Among the best goalkeepers of his generation, Princeton University’s Peter Sabbatini was inducted into the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) Hall of Fame at the 2024 Northeast Water Polo Conference (NWPC) Championship.
A four-year varsity letter winner at Princeton for fellow Hall of Fame member/current United States Naval Academy head coach Luis Nicolao, Sabbatini helped solidify the Tigers as an East Coast powerhouse and backstopped the team to its second National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Final Four appearance in 2004.
Over the course of his collegiate career, he garnered multiple accolades: Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Championship Most Valuable Player (2003), Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) Southern Division Player of the Year (2003), All-Southern Division First Team (2003, 2004), All-Southern Second Team (2002), CWPA Eastern Championship Most Valuable Player (2004), All-Eastern Championship First Team (2003, 2004), All-National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Championship Second Team (2004) and a pair of Association of Collegiate Water Polo Coaches (ACWPC) All-America nods (2003 – Third Team; 2004 – Second Team).
His performance in cage during the four-year span of 2001-to-2004 was unmatched as the Tigers finished 19-6 (2001), 20-9 (2002), 23-4 (2003) and 25-6 (2004) for a combined record of 87-25 – including a 31-3 record in Southern Division competition – with three Southern Division crowns (2001, 2003, 2004), a CWPA title (2004) and a Fourth Place finish at the 2004 NCAA Championship hosted by Stanford University. The NCAA Championship berth marked the second in school history as Princeton previously made and placed eighth at the 1992 event hosted at Belmont Plaza Pool in Long Beach, Calif.
He saved his best performance at a CWPA Eastern Championship for his final league game in the 2004 Eastern Championship title game at Bucknell University.
Following 12-9 and 12-3 victories over the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University, respectively, in the opening two rounds, Sabbatini stonewalled St. Francis Brooklyn for the remainder of regulation, two overtime periods and a pair of sudden victory frames (approximately 22 minutes and 21 seconds) until Nicholas Seaver swept in the game-winning goal with 1:43 left in the second sudden death period for a 3-2 victory.
At the 2004 NCAA Championship, Princeton dropped a pair of narrow defeats to eventual National Champion the University of California-Los Angeles (7-5 L) and Loyola Marymount University (6-5 L) to claim Fourth Place. UCLA went on to defeat Stanford for the NCAA Championship by a 10-9 final in overtime.
Away from Princeton, Sabbatini was a member of the National Youth Team (2001), National Junior Team (2000, 2003) and trained with the National A Team (April 2006 to December 2007), which provided him with the opportunities of training at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, CO (1998, 2006), training internationally (Canada, Venezuela, Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece and Italy) and competing in international tournaments such as NORAMS (1999), Junior Pan-American Championships (2000, earning Co-MVP Tournament Goalie), and the Junior World Championships (2003).
A 2005 graduate of Princeton with a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture, he is currently a Senior Project Manager for McDonough Bolyard Peck, a construction management company headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia. In addition, he gives back to the sport as a 14U goalkeeper coach where he started playing as a child for then Navy head coach and fellow Hall of Fame member Mike Schofield – for the Navy AC Water Polo club in Annapolis, Md.
