Water polo player Carmen Eggens remembers looking at Hometown Hero posters as a youth never thinking she would be chosen as one herself. She could hardly believe it when she got word that she was nominated as a Hometown Hero herself.
"I was really surprised—I never thought I'd be up there with people I look up to," Carmen said.
But her hours of dedication in the pool have made her a hero in her hometown of Pitt Meadows and in Maple Ridge, and have paid off in a scholarship to the University of Hawaii on their water polo team.
Following in the footsteps of her mother who also played water polo and swam with the Haney Neptunes, Carmen and her sister Monika have played since before hitting double digits.
As a child, Carmen also spent countless hours on the basketball court, the soccer field and at the gymnastics club, but from a young age knew that water was her medium.
Carmen's favourite sport at school was basketball and Pitt Meadows Secondary coach and math teacher John Rocca’s basketball camps were a highlight for her. She would have continued playing basketball except that by Grade 9, her life had been completely taken over by water polo, a sport she calls "one of the toughest women's sports out there."
As a teenager, travelling to games and competitions started eating into her school time, but the staff at Pitt Meadows Secondary were always helpful, especially teacher and soccer coach Mike Oldridge who always made sure her school was going smoothly despite her hectic sports schedule including a semester by correspondence while training in Montreal.
"All through school I had pretty supportive teachers," Carmen said.
Playing with the Haney Neptunes Swim Club, Carmen was under the tutelage of Ian and Justin Mitchell—whose brother Kevin is also a Hometown Hero and plays professional water polo—and Carmen said it was the Mitchell brothers who recognized that she would make a great water polo player.
"They taught me all my developing skills," Carmen said. "They just made it so fun to learn."
Carmen went as far as she could with the Haney Neptunes, but her talents allowed her to reach beyond the local clubs and to join the provincial team Pacific Storm where she was coached by Michel Roy who would eventually get her into the program at the University of Hawaii.
Carmen has travelled the world playing water polo. She was at the Junior Pan Ams in El Salvador in 2004 with the Canadian Junior National Team and at the Junior Worlds the next year in Perth, Australia. In 2006, she was at the Junior Pan Ams again, this time in Montreal.
Carmen went to Porto, Portugal, in 2007 to the Junior Worlds for the second time with the Canadian Junior National Team.
In 2009, Carmen competed with the Canadian Senior National Team in California, Russia and Italy.
Carmen applies the lessons she has learned over the years in the pool to her daily life—discipline and dedication to whatever she does: she hates being late for anything and she always completes her homework on time. Along with the wins, there have been disappointments along the way as well, but Carmen's attitude lets her get past them and move on to the next challenge.
"You just have to try to brush them off and try harder the next time," Carmen said. "You can’t focus on the past—you just have to move forward."