I am Vice President of USA Water Polo, the national governing body of water polo for the United States. This is a volunteer position and most of those trips are out-of-pocket or only partially reimbursed. All my international trips were for this purpose.

I am also a National-rated and Nationally ranked water polo referee. As such, for almost all events, I pay my own airfare. The event pays my housing, local transportation, and game fees. My game fees are supposed to be sufficient to make my airfare. This is true only for a small minority of events I attend.

In my day job in St. Louis, my travel is fully paid for by my employer. I wrote the travel policy and it takes into account employees who may want to travel on specific airlines for status or point accumulation.

The vast majority of my travel over the past 6 or 7 years has been for water polo. This year, I think I had something like 7 or 8 trips for my employer (3 of which were STL-Chicago). The rest were water polo.


[This message has been edited by Water Polo Ref (edited 11-30-2002).]