Most successful high school athletic programs take a village to build. Naperville Central boys water polo coach Bill Salentine built his own village.
Salentine, or Sal as he is known by his players and students, knows a thing or two about winning. He has 13 state tournament appearances, the most of any coach in IHSA history. Pair that with a 0.819 career winning percentage, and Sal’s knack for winning is clear.
Sal began teaching PE at Central in 1992, founding the school’s water polo club the following year. Sal had plenty of experience with swimming, but that didn’t translate to water polo.
“I didn’t know anything about water polo,” Sal said. “I had no experience with the sport. I did it as a way to keep the swimmers in the water in March, April and May until the summer swim season started.”
In the following years, Sal sought advice and guidance from more experienced coaches in the local water polo circuit to grow and improve his program. Eventually, in 2001, the team made the transition to IHSA competition. In his first year coaching at the IHSA level, Sal led his team to qualify for the state tournament.
“Years ago, I was a little more intense,” Sal said. “I did a little more yelling at the players instead of yelling to the players. We were still winning games, but people weren’t responding to yelling. Now, I try to be a better teacher of the game or the skill and then the results will come.”
These results came plentifully throughout Sal’s career. In Sal’s first 10 years coaching the team, they made eight state tournament appearances. Bigger things came in 2016, when the team completed a perfect 35-0 season and won the IHSA state championship.
“2016 was special,” Sal said. “That year, I had some great kids, freshmen through seniors, that I still keep in contact with many of them today.”
This was followed by a third-place finish in 2017, then back-to-back championships in 2018 and 2019.
“[These] kids worked hard all year, in and out of the pool, on the swim team in water polo,” Sal said. “They played a lot of water polo together, so they knew who’s gonna go where and who to throw the ball to. And so those were all very special teams for their own little reasons.”
This amount of success did not come without some struggles and growing pains, however.
“I think one of the biggest challenges is trying to get student-athletes to try it,” Sal said. “They might be very good swimmers, but they’ve never played water polo before. So trying to get them out of that mindset where they just have to swim and swim and swim and swim, now we’ve got to swim and catch a ball and throw a ball and somebody’s trying to mug you at the same time.”
For senior Sam Lendzion, Sal coaching extends beyond the pool.
“With everything we do, there is always a purpose behind it,” Lendzion said. “He knows when to have fun and when to be locked in. Sal has taught me a lot about how to be a better water polo player but has also helped me become a better version of myself.”
As he has built his program, Sal values the legacy and history that his players have left.
“I think that we’ve been lucky that we’ve had some great kids,” Sal said. “I’m not just talking about athletic ability, they’re great people. They make it easy to coach. What I’m more proud of is that I see kids that I coached, and they’re now coaching at other buildings. Mark Giuliani’s coaching at York, and Martin Bell is back with me as an assistant, but he was at Neuqua Valley for a while.”
