Sisters share more than sport

The IU campus has a way of selling itself to the many prospective student-athletes who visit each year, but a random guy making fun of a dog usually isn’t in the plan.

But in the case of Lauren and Cassie Wyckoff, current members of the IU water polo team, it might just have played a part.

“There was this one guy who came up to my mom and said, ‘That is the ugliest looking dog I have ever seen,’” Cassie said of her visit to IU. “And from that moment I thought this college was going to be awesome.”

Cassie added that beyond the random canine insult, she enjoyed the school and the prospect of having her sister nearby.

For Lauren, the traditional reasons brought her to campus.

“For me, I liked how it was a college town,” Lauren said. “Everything was revolving around IU. I really, really enjoyed that. Not a lot of places in California that I was looking at were like that.”

The Los Altos, Calif., natives started to play the sport when they were swimmers, with a push from their dad, Travis Wyckoff, who has coached high school and club water polo for 30 years.

The sisters were first steered toward IU when their mother, Ramona Mosley, talked the two into a visit. It was this trip that made both fall in love with the campus and put IU on their college-questing map.

And since starting at IU, the sisters’ teammates have enjoyed them.

“Personally, I love them. They’re really, really good friends,” teammate Maggie Hannon said. “They have really outgoing personalities. Their humor is a really big part of the reason I like them. It’s really dry and funny.”

Though the team stresses the two are individuals, members of the water polo team say it’s the two’s similarities – like their humor – that make them so fun.

They are “goofballs, interactive, inclusive and socially gifted” people, said IU coach Barry King.

But King said once the two are in the pool, they employ two different styles of play.
Lauren, who is a sophomore, is a utility player, and is thus asked to play multiple positions. She has a natural ability in the water and understands the game very well, King said.

Cassie, a freshman goalkeeper, is “a really good athlete and has very good poise for a position that requires poise,” King said.

Although they are very similar to each other, there are some differences between the two besides the positions they play.

“I’m more relaxed and patient,” Cassie said. “Like when we go shopping, it’s all about Lauren. It’s never about me.”

And through the ups and downs of being student-athletes, the sisters are still very close.

“She is very loving, very caring to me. She is very motherly to me,” Cassie said of her older sibling. “But she also treats me like a friend and a sister. I love her to death.”