Amber Drury One Of Four Selected To Ref At 2009 Speedo Top 40
10/5/2009 12:00:00 AM
Huntington Beach, CA - October 5 - Along with coaches and players receiving the honor of participating in the 2009 Speedo Top 40, a perhaps overlooked group is the referees. Once again this year the four Top 40 officials will all be women, and all with a great deal of water polo in their backgrounds.
Returning from 2008 to officiate are Tiffany Frish, Larisa Rotsart, and Danielle Dabbaghian. Joining them this year will be Amber Drury, who spent part of her summer with the Women’s Senior National Team as she served as the American official at the 2009 FINA World League Super Final in Kirishi, Russia.
Drury is no stranger to the game of water polo as prior to her career as an official she served as a coach in places like Michigan and Berkeley. Those roles came after a stellar career in the pool when Drury was one of the top players for the Women’s National Team during the 1980s and early 1990s. Named USA Water Polo’s Women Player of the Year in 1991 and 1994, she later went on to have a role coaching at the Junior National Team level within USA Water Polo.
With all that history of water polo, her love for the game, came much earlier on. “When I was in the fourth grade, my family moved back to my parents’ hometown of Indio in the Coachella Valley,” said Drury. “My father was a three-sport athlete in high school there: football, basketball and swimming. Being a daddy's girl, I decided to take up my dad's sport of swimming. The club coach at the time, Tim McElrath, decided to allow us to play water polo once a week to break things up. I found quickly that the sport was for me and everything just sort of fell into place from there,” she added.
Fast forward through the years in and out of the pool to the present day where Drury finds herself in all whites patrolling the sidelines with a whistle at the ready. She is a fan as much as anyone of the Speedo Top 40. While she can recall a time during her playing days of the Olympic Festivals, events held in the off years of the Olympics to help strengthen the Olympic movement, the Speedo Top 40 remains something special. “Any and all events that bring together the top athletes in our country are only going to benefit the game and the development of our sport. An event such as the Speedo Top 40 is especially important for the fans of the game as it is not often enough that we get to showcase the present stars in our sport as well as some of the past and the future stars all at the same time,” said Drury.
Unable to pinpoint any one particularly great memory, Drury points to her relationships in the sport of water polo. From the friends she has made, playing, coaching, and now reffing, it is a sport that has afforded many great opportunities, another coming this October at the 2009 Speedo Top 40.
So if you get a chance to attend Top 40, be sure to cheer for the players and coaches that have been selected, but don’t forget about the referees, they are also honored to be there.
The Speedo Top 40 takes place October 23-25 at the USA Water Polo National Training Center, in Los Alamitos, CA. For more information or to purchase tickets, click here.
Women's National Team