I started off as the third line goalie for Scarborough way back when I was Atom. But with Francis’ killer leg sets and great coaching I kind of got the hang of goaltending. For all of my Scarborough days, the biggest tournaments were the bantam provincials, and for every tournament, I will never forget how strict Francis was with us and made sure we rested and ate properly. That meant absolutely no junk food and nothing heavy like meat before a game, so that left us with salad and bagels for the weekend. He even made us run around the hotel parking lot early in the morning in winter time before a game to get the blood flowing. He really put the European ideas of water polo into that club.
When I moved to Montréal, Bob asked me if I wanted to train with the older guys in NDC, I realized after the first practice that I had a lot of ground to cover. I was the least experienced and the youngest kid there. But I learned a lot during the morning practices and eventually got invited by Dragan to go to the Dominican Republic for the Junior Pan American Games. It was the first time I saw Scotty coach full throttle. That was a great experience and the first time I played water polo the way it was supposed to be played. I kept training 8 times a week the next year and made the junior national team again and went to Brazil for Junior PanAms; we lost in finals by one goal and it was a heartbreaker. This year my whole team trained really hard and we won U18 nationals, the first time my team wins nationals, and we had won far too many silvers in the past. For the moment I’m training with Bob and Scotty in the NDC before the training camp for Junior Worlds in Croatia starts.