St. Francis College Water Polo 11-Year Home Winning Streak Ends

American sports aficionados are nothing if not statistics freaks, and streaks—winning streaks, hitting streaks, consecutive games—loom large in the imagination of ardent baseball, football and basketball fans. Think DiMaggio’s 56 games without an 0 for, or Cal Ripken’s Iron Man stretch of 2,632 games; Bud Wilkinson’s Oklahoma University’s 47 straight wins from 1953 to 1957; John Wooden’s 88 consecutive wins at UCLA.

But an eleven-year home winning streak? Tiny St. Francis College of Brooklyn, the mighty mite that bills itself “the small college of big dreams,” had put together exactly that—31 straight wins in two home venues, in one of the most physically demanding of all sports, water polo. 

The end came this past Sunday in Brooklyn Heights as Harvard’s water polo team upset St. Francis 14-11. The Crimson entered the match with a 2-8 record that included a 10-7 defeat in early September to the Terriers (7-4 and ranked 14th in the nation). Harvard head coach Ted Minnis acknowledged that they had been aware of the streak: “We knew it was eleven years. …We talked about [St. Francis being)] a very tough place to play in. ..they get great crowds, the atmosphere is amazing. We knew going in that we’d have our hands full.”

It was St. Francis’s first loss in New York City since the Terries dropped a 9-5 decision at the Flushing Meadows Corona Park Aquatics Center on October 2, 2002.

To put the streak in context: in 2002, Michael Bloomberg was barely into his first term in office. Mariano Rivera, the unparalleled Yankee reliever, was less than halfway through his storied career that ends this month after 19 seasons. The U.S. was still six months away from the invasion of Iraq that would not officially end until August 2010.

Srdjan Mihaljevic, St. Francis’s terse head coach, dismissed any impact that the streak may have had on his team’s play: “I was aware it only inadvertently” but “(I) don't think any of our players were…I always tell my players: the most important thing about any competition/game is the very next  play…Everything else, including the current W-L streaks, are just a distraction and hindrance to performance.”

Mihaljevic stressed, “If you are a participant and especially a coach, there is no room for indulging in these number games.”

Irma Garcia, the Terriers’ athletic director since 2007, put the matter in a context befitting the college’s namesake: “Although we were aware that we had a nice home winning streak going, it’s not in the Franciscan spirit to brag about our successes.”

Nevertheless, St. Francis, who went to last year’s Final Four and defeated Air Force in the NCAA national runner-up contest, might be allowed some chest-swelling. Ed Haas is the Director of Communications at the Collegiate Water Polo Association, of which St. Francis is a founding member. Haas said, “The ability of a team to maintain a winning record at home is rare in the sport simply because injury, the length of the season and parity over time among institutions do no favors for the longevity of a student-athlete's performance. Add in the fact that the streak spanned three head coaches (Carl Quigley, Igor Samardzija and Mihaljevic) and the streak gains even more significance.

Hass, who has been with the CWPA since July 2006, added, “from my research, this is the longest streak—in years at least—in the league's history.”

In any case, the end of the streak may mark a wake-up call for the Terriers. Coach MiIhaljevic certainly hopes so, noting that “sometimes you have to go a step backward in order to go two steps forward. Frankly, that is my biggest worry now—whether we will be able to learn from it (the loss).”

A serious baseball fan might point out that the day after his 56-game hitting streak ended, Joe DiMaggio settled into another one that was to last 16 games. The day of their loss to Harvard, St. Francis, in the same spirit, launched their latest home streak by thrashing MIT 18-10. 

With Chip Brenner