Collegiate Water Polo Association & USA Water Polo Hall of Fame Inductee Paul Barren Passes Away

BRIDGEPORT, Pa. — The Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA)/Mid-Atlantic Water Polo Conference (MAWPC)/Northeast Water Polo Conference (NWPC) mourn the passing of CWPA/Pennsylvania State Aquatics and United States Water Polo Hall of Fame inductee/athlete/coach/official Paul Barren.  Barren passed away on Monday, June 6, with funeral services set for Friday, June 17, at St. Cyril of Jerusalem, 1410 Almhouse Road, Jamison, Pa.  A greeting will occur from 10-11:00 a.m. with services set for 11-11:45 a.m.

“Paul Barren was always bigger than life, which is saying something given his physical size,” noted Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) Commissioner Dan Sharadin.

“He has had in incredible impact on the sport, especially in the East, where water polo was in its infancy during much of his life. Personally, I am indebted to him, since he was the one that convinced my high school swim coach to start a program. I never would have been involved in the sport were it not for his willingness to reach out to others. Later, I had the privilege of playing for him during his time as coach of the Philadelphia Aquatic Club, and afterwards as Commissioner, working with him as an administrator while he developed and mentored countless referees that served the colleges and high schools throughout the Northeast. Never one for pretense, always with a sense of humor, he was and still is a true icon of our sport and I consider it a tremendous blessing to have called him a friend. My deepest sympathies go out to Verna, Eric, and Pat at this time and hope that they can take solace in the many lives Paul touched.”

One of only two individuals inducted into the CWPA Hall of Fame for performance outside the realms of coaching and participatory competition – joining CWPA Assistant Commissioner Tom Tracey –  Barren became involved in water polo while attending college at West Chester University. While swimming competitively for the West Chester swim team, he began to learn to play water polo with the school’s club team during the 1960-61 season. After graduation, Barren played with the Philadelphia Water Polo Club, a team composed mostly of German and Hungarian ex-patriots. The level of play he encountered with the team piqued his interest in the sport and he began to pursue it with vigor.

While teaching math and serving as an assistant football coach at Lower Moreland High School in Huntington Valley, Pa. in the late 1960’s, Barren received permission from the school’s athletic department to start a water polo program. He coached the team for the next 20-years, taking his athletes on trips to Europe to compete in Germany (1973) and the Netherlands (1975) while compiling a record of 444-117-5 over 20 years.

“Like many people around the country, Paul helped get me involved in water polo as I was a swimmer,” stated retired Johns Hopkins University men’s water polo head coach Ted Bresnahan.  “His Lower Moreland team came down to Kentucky and played all the teams down there.  Later, I got to know him as an official and friend when I was coaching.”   

During his time at Lower Moreland, the school claimed nine Pennsylvania State Championships in 20-years, including eight consecutive crowns, and garnered five Eastern Scholastic Championships.  He guided his team to the 1976 AAU Junior National Indoor Championship and helped 40 Lower Moreland athletes claim high school All-America honors during his tenure on the bench.

Barren began officiating collegiate water polo games 1969 and continued until retiring in 1994 at the Olympic Festival in St. Louis.  Among his first officiating assignments were games in the newly formed Mid Atlantic Conference – the forerunner to today’s Collegiate Water Polo Association. He also officiated Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) games during the summer and earned national certification in 1973. As Barren’s stature in the officiating community grew, he was able to earn a FINA rating as an international referee in 1978.

Among his officiating assignments were;

• 1972-93 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) Senior National Indoor Championships
• 1973-93 AAU Senior National Outdoor Championships
• 10 (1978, 1979, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994) United States Olympic Festivals
• 1971-94 Eastern Collegiate Championships
• National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Championships
• 1978 Caribbean Games
• 1978 and 1987 Pan American Games
• Junior World Trials for Western Hemisphere in the early 1980’s
• 1983 University Games (Edmonton)
• 1991 World Master Games 1991

His mark in the game, however, extends to multiple levels from amateur to the highest ranks of FINA competition.

A member and coach at the Lower Moreland Water Polo club, the Wilmington (Del.) Aquatic Club and the Philadelphia Aquatic Club, Founded Eastern Water Polo Referees Association and served as Chairman of the Eastern Water Polo Referees Association.  The referees’ rating chairman and Mid-Atlantic Zone chairman in the 1970’s, he served as Mid-Atlantic Water Polo Chairman in the 1960’s and the regional chairman for USA Water Polo overseeing development of officials.  For his efforts, he was named the Volunteer of the Year by the Eastern Coaches Association and was inducted into the Perkiomen Prep Hall of Fame in 1983.

Away from the pool, Barren had a son (Dr. Eric Barren) and daughter (Verna) with wife Patricia.  A veteran of the United States Marine Corps (1959-62), he gave back to the community and earned his living by utilizing dual Masters Degrees from Temple University (Math Education) and Villanova University (Applied Mathematics) as a full-time Business and Math teacher at Lower Moreland High School and a part-time professor at Gwynedd Mercy College.

For his lifetime of contributions to the sport of water polo, Barren was elected to the USA Water Polo Hall of Fame in 1995 and was inducted at a ceremony in Seattle, Wash. in 1997.  He joined the CWPA Hall of Fame in 2004 and was previously inducted in the Pennsylvania State Aquatics Hall of Fame as both an athlete and a coach.

My first memory of Paul was during my coaching years at Tufts University. We had started a club water polo program and went over to MIT for a tournament. As I walked onto the pool deck I saw this giant of a player get out of the pool looking larger than life. Little did I know at the time, this would be the start of a special friendship that would develop and grow for the rest of my life.

When coaching at Brown,Paul would stay at my house when officiating water polo tournaments. Intimidating in stature but a big Teddy Bear in real life once you got to know him. Always making you comfortable with a good story or a joke to tell. On the pool deck he did a tremendous job consistently officiating the game. You always knew on a controversial call when to sit down and just coach your team. All it took was a special look your way and you knew it was time to sit. I’ll always cherish the friendship we had and the many wonderful memories………..may he Rest In Peace – Ed Reed, Brown University/Rhode Island Aquatic/Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA)/USA Water Polo Hall of Fame.

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Paul was a mentor, father figure and big brother to all of us. I always looked forward to playing games that he reffed. We all wanted to play extra well when he was on the deck. He made our great game of water polo better.  We will all miss so many things about him. While most of my memories of Paul make me laugh, I’ll never forget when he stopped by the Bucknell bench before our last game senior year that he was reffing  and he looked at all of us seniors and simply said, “I’m really gonna miss you guys!” He has no idea how much we’ll miss him. – Mark Gensheimer, Bucknell University/Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) Hall of Fame/CWPA Governance Council President

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As most water polo enthusiasts know, Paul has been a national leader in the sport for 40 years. The team he coached at Lower Moreland High School in suburban Philadelphia won an astounding 444 games during his tenure, including the Junior Nationals and twice traveled to Europe. He then became a FINA-certified referee and officiated at most of the top men’s and women’s tournaments in the United States, including the Olympic Festival, the Junior Olympics and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Championship, plus many international tournaments. There is more, much more, but suffice it to say he’s been inducted into the Perkiomen Prep School Hall of Fame, the Pennsylvania Swimming and Water Polo Hall of Fame, the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) Hall of Fame and the USA Water Polo Hall of Fame.

Water Polo had been played in the Eastern United States and from my understanding the game was extremely rough. According to former Villanova University swim coach Ed Geise, there had been many near drowning victims and the sport was dropped by University of Pennsylvania. The rules that they played by were called “soft ball” rules. Many summer clubs played the game for recreational purposes as my early memories include playing it in the diving well at Kelly Pool in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia with the rules changing from night to night.

My sports career was involved with football, basketball, track, baseball, boxing and swimming. Kids were encouraged to get involved in all sports. As the reader knows, today a kid gets involved in one sport and stays with it for their entire youth.

After high school I went to Perkiomen Prep School and played football, basketball, baseball and threw the shot put for the track team. Then it was on to Kutztown State University (now Kutztown University) for two years of playing football.

During the summer, John Spannuth encouraged me to get back into swimming competition. It was during this time that Ed Twardowski recruited me to swim at West Chester State University (now West Chester University).

It was at West Chester where I met my future wife, Patricia. I had some success swimming at West Chester. The football coach would not allow transfers to play football.

My introduction to water polo was at West Chester State where we had a club team that played in the spring.

After graduation, football and basketball were my main interest. Water Polo was being played in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Athletic Club. The majority of players were from Europe. There were players from Holland, Germany, Yugoslavia and Hungary. These guys were good and helped me learn the sport correctly.

At the time, I started to teach in the Colonial School District and my effort was to get the boys at the high school level involved in water polo.

At first this idea was met with “negativity”, since they did not want to have any financial obligations for a new team. Also, the swim coach did not like the idea, since he thought it would “hurt” their swim stroke. It seemed like the coach was doing his best to make “prima donnas” out of these kids. Some of the boys listened to him and others defied him. We played Upper Merion many times that spring and finally the Athletic Director and Principal said to discontinue the program.

My next job was with Lower Moreland High School teaching math and being the line coach for their football team. Since Andy Tryens had been a successful head coach ,the chance of being a head coach for football was remote. The Athletic Director, Principal and the Superintendent gave me their approval to start a club water polo team. For the first year, we played Wilson HS from Levittown and Upper Merion High Schools, along with Montclair Academy and Lawrenceville Academy both from New Jersey.

While there was no lack of enthusiasm on my part, there was something quite obviously missing and that was my administrative leadership.

Several people were enthusiastic about getting the sport underway. Ed Conrad ,who was the swim coach at Lower Merion High School, had his team playing along with Harriton from the same school district. Rocco Datola, swim coach at Pennsbury High School, and the late George Ingram had Wilson High School from Levittown playing. Steve Sauer of Methacton High School had a team underway.

It was Steve who was able to organize a league that was very loose in structure. LaSalle High School and Upper Dublin High School soon joined the league, so by 1970 we would have a schedule for the fall and spring. Teams would come and go due to lack of commitment by some of the coaches and administrations. At one time we had the league comprised of the following teams: Wilson (Levittown), Neshaminy, Pennsbury, Lower Merion, Harriton, LaSalle, Methacton, Interboro, Upper Merion, Upper Dublin and Lower Moreland.

At best, with the exception of Methacton and Lower Moreland, the quality of play was not very competitive. My time was spent offering clinics for the players and coaches. However,some swim coaches seemed to become possessive and would attempt to tell their players not to come to the clinic because Lower Moreland was overly aggressive .

Lower Moreland had very good athletes with the motivation to improve, so it was obvious we had to play better competition. We would still play the high schools and that would give my younger players the opportunity to play meaningful games. The team raised money by the purchase of donuts at wholesale which were later sold during study halls that were conducted in the lunchroom. We were able to earn money that would be used to cover gas, motel and travel expenses. The team would continue to play in the spring. Our competition would be in open tournaments at colleges such as Brown University, Army, Bucknell University, Villanova University, the University of Pittsburgh, Richmond University and Asheville YMCA .If any national tournaments were available we would enter those too.

The Junior National in Greenville, South Carolina was the first national tournament which we won. This attracted many players to water polo at Lower Moreland because we did very well in these tournaments.

When John Spannuth was Director of Aquatic Sports for the AAU, he invited the team to play against international competition in West Germany and Holland. Our competition would be against their Junior National teams. They were comprised of age 20 and under players. Since we were already playing that age group it was a great opportunity.

We needed realistic goals for this competition as one of the goals was not to be humiliated in these games.

So off to Europe we traveled. We had a couple of days to get used to the situation as the West Germans arranged for some local competition and we did very well. This did the team’s psyche a lot of good. Our team would play their national team three times. It would be wonderful to say that the team won, but it did not happen. However, we did not get blown out. After the competition was over it was on to Holland where the results were the same.

I was so proud of this group and they developed a total overhaul in confidence. John Spannuth organized the competition for the following two years. This competition also involved swimming, diving and synchronized swimming. Water Polo was the only team that lost. The School Board, Administration, parents and the student body got behind us with their support. This competition would take place in the spring and the players would miss two weeks of classes. The Administration got a math substitute for me. Our Superintendent, Dr Seltzer and the Principal, Mr Robinson, came to the airport to see us off.

In those days our strongest competition came from Wilson High School, located in West Lawn, Pa., which is very close to Reading. Roy Snyder was the coach and was very competitive in all sports. Roy also coached swimming and still coaches swimming at Wilson (as of this writing), although he has been retired for several years. He was also able to get other teams started.

Charles Schroeder was able to get water polo started in the Pittsburgh suburbs and those quickly became competitive. Erie had been playing water polo for many years so state competition was getting relatively strong, but during the 1970’s Lower Moreland won the state championship eight years in a row.

Other teams were getting stronger throughout the state as well, and this was great for the development of the sport. A young man by the name of Rudy Ruth took the job as aquatic director at Wilson School District and the game of water polo really took off. Rudy is a wonderful administrator, an excellent coach and a top salesman for the sport.

But at this time Lower Moreland was no longer playing. This came about by some questionable decisions by the new administration. When we were developing ,the aquatic director allowed us to have Wednesday evenings from 6-to-8 p.m. and this time would be used to have kids between fifth and eighth grades learn the sport. They were coached by the high school kids, and this went well in providing us with new players who knew the fundamentals. However, the principal saw this as a non-monetary event and cancelled it.

I could see the demise of the sport almost immediately. We would average about 20-to-40 kids coming out each year for the team. One year, we had 70 athletes come out for the team, but by the last year when the team was functioning we had nine kids on the team.

What kept me going in the sport was being able to referee. Tom Parisi, now the Honorable Judge Parisi from Berks County, organized the referees and assigned them to officiate local high school matches and various high school competitions.

As mentioned earlier the main drive behind the sport was Rudy Ruth, now Superintendent of the Wilson School District. When you have his credentials people will sit and listen to you.

At this time my involvement was officiating at the collegiate level, training new refs through clinics and assigning the officials to matches. I never cared for the assigning the refs, especially when they would cancel out of games that they were assigned to officiate. The coaches in the league saw what was happening and came to my rescue when they had Dr. Don McQuade and Gene Chen take over this task. Boy! That was a relief!! The collegiate competition was managed by Dan Sharadin, who organized the men and women’s competition into varsity and club divisions.

The competition in the collegiate game grew as the teams would hire coaches who knew the game and were very professional. However many of the refs could not keep up with the game and would get upset when the coaches became carried away with their criticism. They would get concerned with the criticism and it would hurt their performance. It was my purpose to get inside their head and tell them that “this happens in every sport”. The coaches would see what was happening and really take on some of the refs. Some of the officials’ meetings would go on and on about the behavior of the coaches. My comments into the meetings would counter that this was the way the sport was to evolve.

It takes a special kind of an individual to be a ref. It helps to know the sport by having participated, coached or officiated another sport. There were many coaches that I would talk to during the off-season about the game and the way it was evolving. These guys were very professional and we would have interesting discussions. In other words we respected each other. My advantage came from officiating football where there was plenty of “heat” from the sideline.

Two of the funniest comments heard on deck were from the very successful coach of Slippery Rock University. Dr. Richard “Doc” Hunkler.

One was the time I wore glasses for the first time in calling a game. The Rock was playing a game against the Naval Academy and Dr Hunkler thought a penalty call was missed. Soon after the play of the game stopped, Doc came running up with a towel and told me to clean my glasses. My reaction was to laugh as Doc was understanding of my sensitivity to wearing glasses.

The other time involved was during a game when he was coaching an All-Star team at one of the “Olympic Festivals” and another ref called a penalty shot against Doc’s team. The player taking the shot missed and Doc loudly exclaimed that even God knew it was a bad call! It was a funny moment that still makes me laugh to this day.

Many fine coaches were encountered during my water polo career and their guidance really helped. They were: Pete Cutino, Ted Newland, Monte Nitzkowski and Art Lambert from California. On the East Coast, Chuck Hines, Ed Reed, Doc Hunkler Mike Schofield, and Dan Sharadin stand out. They are/were not only good friends, but useful as a sounding board. These coaches are also very helpful with inexperienced coaches in guiding them. Some of the refs think that they are perfect all the time and unwilling to get feedback from the better experienced players. There was only one perfect man who walked the earth, and he was not a water polo referee.

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In August 2021, the Collegiate Water Association (CWPA) released an interview with Barren from its PoloCast Podcast series hosted by Team Canada Olympian/Yale University alum/CWPA Hall of Fame inductee George Gross in which Barren recalled his coaching and officiating experiences.