Former Enumclaw High water polo player Alison Ballard has taken her game from the prep ranks to the collegiate level.

A team captain during her senior season at EHS, Ballard is now a junior at Washington State University, where she and her Cougar teammates compete in the Women’s Collegiate Club Northwest Division.

This is Ballard’s second season with the WSU program and some of the lessons learned in the local pool have paid dividends.

“Water polo at EHS prepared me in the sense that it taught me the basics of water polo,” she wrote in an email from Pullman. “It is where I learned how to play, shoot, understand the game.”

Ballard also grew as a player through involvement in the Puget Sound Polo club team.

“That is where I learned the truly competitive side of water polo and that transitioned into college,” she wrote.

Predictably, the pace quickened a bit when Ballard packed her bags and headed to the Palouse.

“The main difference is everything is more intensified at the college level,” she wrote. “Swim sets are faster, practice is longer and the drills are more specific. The thing about college is everyone already has done it so it is not like we are starting from scratch.”

Ballard and her teammates kicked off the 2014 in fine fashion, winning three of four games during a mid-January tournament on neutral waters at Central Washington University. Ballard accounted for four goals as WSU defeated Oregon State, Western Washington and the University of Washington, losing only to Oregon.

Aside from those teams, the Northwest Division includes Portland State University.

Ballard is in her second year with the WSU program.

Washington State will host a 16-game tournament in early March, then head to Corvallis, Ore., in April for the Northern Division championships. That tourney will determine which team heads to the May 2-4 National Collegiate Club Championship.

Water polo is not an NCAA sport in Pullman, instead operating under the umbrella of University Recreation, which recognizes 27 club teams. Offerings include some of the traditional collegiate sports, like baseball and wrestling, along with such diverse clubs as badminton, equestrian and triathlon. In all, approximately 850 WSU students participate in club sports.