Water polo tournament to take place at Jefferson County Lake
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RIGBY — Rigby High School has a long history of winning sports teams.
An unsanctioned athletic event seems to be rising in popularity. The third annual water polo tournament is happening at Jefferson County Lake Friday and Saturday.
Ryan Hancock and Willie Wassemiller started the event in 2021. They’d been playing the sport for many years and wanted to host a Rigby tournament. It’s attracted new students each year.
Rigby High School now has a water polo club, and the tournament helps raise funds for it. Raffle prizes and food vendors are part of it.
Tournament advisor Matt Tanner tells EastIdahoNews.com this year’s tournament is the largest one to date.
“We have about five teams from Utah, and five from Idaho. They range from Boise to Cache Valley,” Tanner says.
About 90 athletes and 10 teams are participating. Each team consists of nine people. Tanner’s team includes five of his siblings and three of his old college roommates.
Tanner, 31, of Sugar City, has been involved in the tournament since the beginning. He and his family have a special reason for playing this year. About a month ago, his dad, Tim, was diagnosed with a rare form of terminal cancer. Doctors say he only has a few months left.
Tim played the sport in his high school days, and so did Matt and his siblings.
“He was always a super dad watching each of us play through high school,” Matt says.
Since Tim is unable to be there, Matt and his siblings are playing in his honor.
“It’s a good nod to this family tradition of all of us playing together,” says Matt. “We’ll be taking lots of pictures and providing updates.”
Matt continued to play water polo as a college student on an intramural team at Brigham Young University-Idaho. When he heard about the Rigby tournament, he saw it as a way to have a family reunion while also staying in touch with his college teammates.
He and his team mentored the Rigby High School team the first year. They took on a bigger role the following year after the high school team won the tournament.
Today, Tanner is heavily involved in planning, scheduling and organizing the event.
The games will begin Friday at 10 a.m. The Idaho teams and the Utah teams are separate brackets and each team in the bracket will play against each other the first day. They’ll be ranked based on their performance, and be paired up with another team for the semi-finals on Saturday.
The teams will “play it out” with the other bracket until a champion is determined.
“Each day, you’ll have around four games, and will take somewhere between first and 10th (place),” says Tanner.
The tournament will go until 4 p.m. both days.
The event is free to the public, but there is a $6 admission fee for Jefferson County Lake.