Read about the St. Louis area’s top high school water polo players and their accomplishments from the 2025 season.
St. Louis University High water polo coach John Penilla likes to think of Junior Billikens standout Nick Zimmerman as a complete player.
“He’s always in the right position, so offensively what that means is that he’s in a good position to score all the time and he’s fast, too. He’s one of the fastest guys on the team so you know he’s just this rare combination of speed and size and skill. And he can do it all defensively,” Penilla said. “He’s just he’s the whole package and I think that’s why he got recognized by the coaches as the (Missouri Water Polo) player of the year and now is All-Metro player of the year.”
After a year in which he won a state team championship with the SLUH swimming team in the fall, Zimmerman followed that up with a second successive MWP district title for the Jr. Bills — the program’s 24th overall — and he was named the Doug Hall player of the year, and now, the Post-Dispatch All-Metro player of the year.
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“The last year or so, it’s been a lot of hard work, but it’s really paid off,” said Zimmerman, who just wrapped up his junior year. “It’s really great because we’ve just worked hard all year. It was really great to start seeing things going our way and getting recognition for how much hard work we were putting in.”
Zimmerman tossed in 57 goals and 39 assists for 153 points this season. The point total (ninth) and the assist total (tied for 10th) were on the fringe of the area top 10, but he meant so much more to the Jr. Bills in the pool than just the numbers, including his work on the defensive end.
“I honestly think I’m one of the few true utility players, so a lot of the time this season I ended up in the center (offensively), but then also I was trusted for a lot of center defender work and general defense,” he said. “I think I just end up in a lot of different positions and I think that I’m good when I end up in those different positions.”
Zimmerman is all about the team.
He was quick to credit his older brother, Evan, along with other SLUH standouts like Danny McAuliffe, Derek Nester and Luke Gill, for the team’s continued success.
“They work so hard and they’re so talented and this year they were able to get some recognition, but I don’t think any of that will be enough,” Zimmerman said. “They would be the star players on other teams. They’re so humble, being able to do it even while they’re the fifth and sixth players on the team. I think our team’s dominance this year would not have been possible without those guys.”
Nick has been able to mesh so well with Evan over the years at SLUH. They were able to spend three years together in the pool.
“It’s hard to talk about Nick without talking about Evan, just because he obviously looks up to his brother and it’s kind of flip-flopped where the younger brother kind of surpasses his older brother,” Penilla said. “But there’s so many ways in which Evan influenced Nick and it’s really cool.”
The family ties to the pool extend beyond that, as the Zimmermans’ father, Mike, and uncle, Jeff, were also SLUH water polo players.
“It’s just been really cool sort of the following in their footsteps,” Nick said. “My brother and I want to be really good like they were, so it’s just really cool to see the Zimmerman name carrying on the legacy.”
Evan will be off to Boston College in the fall, where he plans to play club water polo, so Nick will be without his sidekick sibling in the pool for the first time in a while.
“I think it’ll be good for both of them,” Penilla said. “Evan was certainly our vocal captain this year, and really the year before even too, so I think we’ll see Nick have to grow into that role. It’s something he’s certainly capable of, and I’m excited to see it and see who will join him in that leadership role.”
Read about the St. Louis area’s top high school water polo players and their accomplishments from the 2025 season.
