Today in Star Trek history: water polo coach and Enterprise consultant Richard Corso is born
The game of water polo features in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Vox Sola"
MAY 4, 2022 - Star Trek: Enterprise’s Captain Jonathan Archer was a big fan of water polo. He could sometimes be found bouncing a water polo ball off the walls of his room or watching a recorded game sent from Earth in his spare time. Of course, if you bring anything like that, from the “real world,” into a show like Star Trek, you need to bring in a consultant. And on this day, in 1954, ENT’s water polo consultant, Richard Corso, was born.
Corso was born in Flushing, New York and graduated with a Bachelor of the Arts in Physical Education from Southern Connecticut University in 1977. From there, he went on to matriculate at California State University, graduating with a Masters of Science in Kinesiology in 1981, then stayed at the school to work as an assistant coach for swimming and water polo until 1985.
After leaving CSU, Corso took a position as head water polo coach at North Hollywood’s Harvard Westlake School, where the California Interscholstic Federation awarded him the title “Coach of the Year” in 1987, ‘88, and ‘91.
For three years in the early 1990s, Corso was the Canadian National Team’s coach and in ‘96 he was the head Olympic coach for the US Men’s Water Polo team.
In 2002, the ENT episode “Vox Sola” premiered. After a disastrous first contact with the Kreetassans, Archer’s spirits are low. Chief Engineer Trip Tucker’s lame attempts to cheer him up don’t help, so Trip whips out a recording of the recent water polo match, Stanford v Texas, and he and Archer watch the game. While crew members are being captured and held in the cargo bay by an unknown lifeform, the two friends are having a ball, unaware of the danger.
Through the course of the scene, we learn that water polo is one part basketball, one part swimming, and one part wrestling; that the pool has to be deep enough so the players can’t touch the bottom; that upon a foul, a player will be ejected from the game for twenty seconds; and we learn the term “point man.” All of this, no doubt, came from Richard Corso.
Water polo is mentioned several times throughout the series, but the beginning of “Vox Sola” is drenched with water polo, so it makes sense that they would need an expert in the field to get the terminology right, and in the ‘90s, there was nobody better-suited to the task than Corso.
Three years later, Corso would go on to become the head coach for the University of California women’s water polo team, the Golden Bears, earning a place in the USA water polo Hall of Fame in 2015. The honor came after he won his 200th game with the team, in just ten years. A year later, however, his career would end amid controversy.
In 2016, at the age of 62, Corso stepped down from the position, which he held for eleven years. He was replaced by 39-year-old Coralie Simmons. According to allegations Corso made in a lawsuit a short time later, the school’s officials created a hostile work environment in order to force the coach out and replace him with a younger, female coach.
The result of the lawsuit seems to have gone unreported. It’s possible it was settled out of court, as these things often are. However it ended, Corso turns 68 today. Please join us at Daily Star Trek News in wishing him a very happy birthday.