Kelcy Barott of Huron High School, the 2010 Washtenaw County Girls Water Polo Player of the Year. (Melanie Maxwell | AnnArbor.com)

Six feet tall and skinny as a beanpole, Kelcy Barott walked into the Huron High School natatorium as a freshman, looking for something to do during the basketball offseason. She’d never played water polo, but she needed a way to stay in shape in the spring.

“I had seen my sister play water polo and it looked like fun,” says Barott. “Plus, being in the water, it would be easy on the joints. So I thought, ‘Why not?’”

Her swimming coaches had told her growing up that she could be a star in the water if she stuck with it. Her height and long arms gave her advantages that no amount of training could ever account for.

Their pleas, however, were useless. Barott hated the individualistic nature of swimming. Hated the thought of competing by, and for, herself.

Sure, they keep team scores at swim meets, but a swim team is as good as the sum of its individual parts. Barott enjoys the synergy of being on a team.

“Just being able to pick up your teammates when they need it, rely on them when you’re down, and when you click together, I love that about team sports,” says Barott, “That’s a special feeling, something I never got with individual sports.”

For someone who enjoys nothing more than blending in with her teammates, Barott does a poor job of not standing out. Just three years after taking up the sport “just to try something new,” she is the 2010 AnnArbor.com Washtenaw County Player of the Year after a dominating junior campaign.

Barott was tops in the county in goals scored with 136, converting on an astounding 70 percent of her shots. She also had 42 assists on the year, averaging 5.56 points per game.

“To be gifted with size and speed and talent at handling the ball, in general most people can’t just adapt to a sport so easily, let alone dominate. But she has,” says Huron coach Evan Koorhan.

Barott is far from a one-dimensional offensive force. She led her team in steals (104) and blocks (16) and was the River Rats’ best defender, as well.

“She can do everything. A lot of times we put her on the other team’s best player, too, because she can defend just as well as she can attack,” Koorhan notes.

Barott -- a center on the Huron basketball team who likes to step beyond the arc to drain the occasional 3-pointer -- was often the third or fourth option to score for the River Rats during the winter. Not the case in the spring, when she was the first through fourth option.

Barott says she enjoys the facets of both roles.

“I don’t mind it either way. In basketball, I defer to my teammates most of the time. But in water polo, I know that, a lot of the time, my teammates are looking to me to be the go-to. To be the scorer,” Barott says. “Both are fine because I just like doing whatever I can for my team.”

In the final week of the season, Barott, a first-team All-State selection by the Michigan Water Polo Association, couldn’t be there for her team at the state tournament after she was ruled academically ineligible.

“It was just pure shock,” says Barott, who declined to comment on the details of her ineligibility, but claimed to have consistently received A’s and B’s all year. “Once I got over the initial shock I just started thinking, ‘What can I do to help my team?’”

In Barott’s absence, the River Rats - who were consistently ranked among the top three in the state all season - finished in seventh place at the state tournament.

“It’s difficult because you begin to rely on someone for such a long time. … To have that person completely out of the water wasn’t easy,” says Koorhan. “But she really stepped up, I think, as a leader at that time, doing everything she could to help in practice and be a vocal leader on the sidelines, motivating her teammates.”

“Academics has never been a concern with Kelcy, so that was an alarming thing to me,” Koorhan says. “But after going through that, I don’t think we ever have to worry about it again, and after having to be on the sidelines in support of her teammates, I think we started to see the vocal leadership come out of her as well.”

Pete Cunningham covers sports for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at petercunningham@annarbor.com, or by phone at 734-623-2561. Follow him on Twitter @petcunningham.