Bucknell University Athletics
Two-Time All-American Hyden Looking to Cap Career on High Note
9/20/2010 8:00:00 AM | Men's Water Polo
Sept. 20, 2010
By Todd Merriett, Bucknell Athletic Communications
In 2005, Bucknell became just the fifth non-California school to host the NCAA Men's Water Polo Championship. The prestigious event took place nearly a half-decade ago, but its benefits are still greatly impacting the Bison program.
One of the fans in the Kinney Natatorium stands in December of 2005 was a high school junior named Richie Hyden. His Greenwich (Conn.) high school coach had purchased tickets to the sold-out event and brought the whole team to witness high-level water polo. Little did Hyden, a native of Australia who had lived in the United States less than a year, know that five years later he would think of the Lewisburg, Pa., campus as home and he would have spent countless hours, morning and night, inside the spacious Kinney Natatorium.
"I didn't know anything about the school," remembers Hyden, a senior who is now one of the best water polo players in Bucknell history. "Coming from Australia, I thought `Wow! This is awesome!' I thought every school was like this.
"The whole event (NCAAs) was so cool. It was something so big and people our age playing. I have seen the Olympics, but this had so many fanatical people and people who came so far. Stanford and USC played in the final and there were fans that came from California who were not even parents, they just wanted to come and watch."
Hyden thinks those water polo fans traveled a long distance. However, he forgot about his even more extensive journey
Hyden spent most of his adolescence in his native Australia, where he had become a solid water polo player and a member of the National Youth and National Junior Teams. But, after his sophomore year of high school, his father, Robert, took a new job in Connecticut. Hyden considered staying in his homeland, but his mother convinced him to make the move with the rest of the family.
The left-hander departed Australia at the conclusion of his sophomore year of high school, which meant it was December, the beginning of summer vacation in the Southern Hemisphere. He arrived in Connecticut mid-year and had to go through another sophomore semester. That extra semester ended up benefitting Hyden in the long run as he graduated from Greenwich High School early and spent the spring before enrolling at Bucknell training and playing with the Australian junior squad.
Thanks to his involvement with the water polo team at Greenwich, Hyden's transition to his new home was easy and fun.
"I moved from an all-boys school with about 70 in my class to a graduating class of 1,000," recounts Hyden, who grew up in Melbourne and still talks with a slight accent. "I had been going to school with the same friends ever since first grade and if I was thrown into a high school in the U.S. with no affiliations, it would have been really hard. I went to water polo practice before I actually started school, so I met everyone. I was the token Australian kid."
While Hyden fit in seamlessly, thanks plenty to water polo, he did notice some big differences between his old home and his new one.
"School here is not school in Australia," explains Hyden, who is majoring in international relations, but is interested in going into media or television once his water polo days are over. "School in Australia is really relaxed and not so strenuous. The attitude is different. Here, everyone is so driven. You have freshmen, 14-years-old, and already talking about what colleges they are going to attend and what they are going to major in. I was thinking `I have no idea.' Everyone was talking about grades, grades, grades and how much schoolwork they had to do. I actually realized within weeks that I was sitting there thinking the same things. I was going to practice, doing homework, sleeping and doing it all over again. There was no time left in the day. In Australia, school started two hours later and got out at the same time. I was done at 3:00 and just had training and that was it."
The academic side of school certainly was an adjustment for Hyden, but interestingly, water polo was too. Despite being named an All-American and two-time league player of the year in high school, Hyden had to adapt to the U.S. style of play. In Australia, players are extremely specialized, so Hyden only played left-handed shooter and driver. Once he moved to Connecticut he played all over the pool and got to lead the team, rather than just play a role.
The other big difference Hyden experienced was how much faster the game is in the U.S., especially at the college level.
"College players swim so fast and so hard that if you can't swim, you can't keep up," explains Hyden. "In Australia it is more ground and pound, which is more like the international game. The international game is slower, but it's more about the size and strength. It's more about doing everything right than about being blisteringly fast. Here, a lot of teams can swim up and down so fast and they don't get tired during the course of four quarters."
To help fit into the faster water polo play, Hyden joined the swimming team at Greenwich High School. He had originally given up swimming in favor of water polo when in his youth he was swimming laps, but found himself bored and looking longingly at the adjacent water polo practice in the huge pool where he trained.
Having experience with the faster style of play helps Hyden considerably when he goes back to Australia and plays with the national squad training group, the 30-plus players vying for one of the 13 spots on Australia's Olympic Team.
While Hyden, a two-time Honorable Mention All-American, is good enough to play professionally after college and to be in the running for Australia's Olympic Team, one item that originally led him to Bucknell was the chance to play immediately. Given his immense talent, he could easily have gone to any of those schools he watched play for the 2005 national title, but he didn't want to be redshirted or to sit behind an upperclassman for a year or two. Hyden eventually got in contact with then-Bucknell head coach John Zeigler and eventually formed a bond with current head coach John Abdou, who was then an assistant for the Bison. After making the four-hour drive to Bucknell a few times and watching Bucknell in action, it turned out to be an easy decision to don the Orange and Blue.
In 2007, Hyden joined a Bison squad that featured talented veterans like Mark Masterson, Jason Rechel and Kyle Roslyn and expectations were high. The team was ranked 18th nationally in the CWPA Preseason Poll and proceeded to climb as high as No. 11 in the nation, the highest in-season ranking in program history. Hyden knew he would play as a freshman, but had no idea the impact he would have on such a strong team. He finished his first year with the most goals (40), assists (31) and points (71) by a Bison freshman since 2002 and was named the CWPA Rookie of the Year.
"I knew I was going to see game time as a freshman, but I wasn't sure what the starting situation would be," says Hyden. "It just happened we needed a lefty and I slotted in. I thought I had a good season individually the first year and didn't think it was going to get better."
Boy, was Hyden mistaken. His sophomore year was certainly better than his freshman as he posted 87 goals, 51 assists and 138 points, nearly doubling all of his offensive numbers from the season before. He earned his first of two straight Honorable Mention All-America citations and was named CWPA All-Southern Division First Team. He scored the most goals by a Bison since 1997, piled up the most assists since 2000 and the most points since 1993.
Hyden continued his remarkable career last fall when he totaled 53 goals, 42 assists and 95 points. He also drew a career-high and program single-season record 69 ejections on his way to a second consecutive first-team all-conference nod and another Honorable Mention All-America certificate.
"A lot of my success is due to our coaching staff," praises Hyden. "We work hard. A lot of teams think they work hard, but no one else does the two-a-days like us. We are in the pool every morning, every night, have lifting sessions and have five games a weekend, not just one or two. What you put in is what you get out."
Hyden, who leads the team in goals with 16 entering this weekend's ECAC Championship at Harvard, has already gotten a lot out of his experience at Bucknell. He will go down alongside the program greats. Already, his name graces the program's career goals (9th, 196), assists (9th, 129) and points (10th, 325) top-10 lists. He is the first Bison to join any of those lists since 2000.
Those numbers are certainly impressive, but Hyden was completely unaware of them until told by someone else. His only focus is on getting Bucknell back to the NCAA Championship, a place it has not been for a quarter century.
He sees some similarities between the 2010 squad and the 2007 team that produced one of only two 20-win campaigns in program has seen in the last 25 years. However, the biggest difference he sees is how humble this group is, especially the five-person senior class of himself, Sean Coghlan, Miles Gilhuly, Howie Kalter and Paul Reamey.
"The seniors know we have the talent to do well, but nobody is talking about it," says Hyden of the group that had combined for 422 career goals and 283 career saves entering this weekend's ECAC Championship. "We have seen teams rise and then come crashing down. (Coach) Abdou is drumming into everyone that if we do what we are supposed to, it will all fall into place."
Hyden can only hope it all comes full circle and he is able to end his time at Bucknell the same way it started - at the NCAA Championship.
Note: This story appeared in the Sept. 18 Bucknell Football Gameday Program vs. Dartmouth.
