Splashing water echoes throughout the Aquatics Center as the El Camino College men’s water polo team resets for another play.

Twin brothers Robbie and Cooper Josic, both 19, exchange a quick glance with no words needed.

In seconds, they’re in sync, threading a pass through defenders before the ball hits the back of the net.

Cooper plays Attacker and Robbie plays center forward, and both have different roles on the team.

According to the ECC athletics website, Cooper leads the Warriors with 54 assists and 61 steals, while his brother Robbie is right behind his brother with 42 steals which is second most on the team. Robbie also leads the team in shots with 186 and third on the team with 21 blocks.

Cheers bounce off the walls as the boys laugh, regroup, and get ready to do it all again.

Playing on a team is hard work and requires a lot of practice unless you’ve been with your partner since birth.

“We’ve always swam, like, our whole life. We always went to the beach,” Robbie said.

Robbie and Cooper bring a special advantage to the Warriors through their brotherly bond.

Robbie recently broke ECC’s record for most drawn exclusions, a key stat that reflects a player’s ability to earn scoring opportunities for their team.

Growing up in San Pedro, their love for the water started young, around age 8 or 9, when they joined the junior lifeguards at Torrance Beach.

“We’d be there from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. We’d just hang out at the beach,” Cooper said. “That was our summer, for like six years.”

Those long days built up comfort and confidence in the water, two traits that would later carry over into being on the water polo team.

During his freshman year, Robbie joined the team at South Torrance High, and Cooper followed, despite initially thinking water polo was a strange sport.

“After a couple weeks of playing, we just kind of fell in love with it,” Cooper said.

At first, water polo wasn’t their main focus.

The twins grew up playing basketball, and their dad, a former college basketball player from Serbia coached them throughout childhood.

“He’s proud of us,” Robbie said. “Serbia’s like the number one [water polo] team in the world, so he loves that we stuck with it.”

Although they loved the sport, neither pictured themselves continuing after high school.

“I honestly thought I was done after high school,” Cooper said.

But after a California Interscholastic Federation loss, men’s water polo coach Noah Rubke encouraged them to continue their journey at ECC.

With Rubke convincing them it would be a fun experience, the brothers figured they’d stay in the water.

“Screw it, why not? What’s two more years? We got to get some fun out of here,” Cooper said.

Joining for fun didn’t stop the twins from developing into core players on the team.

Rubke said the brothers’ skills balance each other effortlessly.

Robbie handles the heavy work at center while Cooper uses his lefty angle to open things up and feed him the ball.

Cooper ends up creating most of the plays and Robbie finishes them.

“He [Cooper] is more of a playmaker and Robbie is more of the muscle,” Rubke said.

That connection shows up in key moments.

“Almost every game we get a six-on-five,” Robbie said, referring to a play when the opposing team has a player excluded. “We just lock eyes and he’ll throw a lob to me to shoot in.”

They don’t need to talk, they just get it, an unspoken connection that leads to a goal.

“It’s kind of like we have that sense,” Cooper added.

Brotherhood also comes with competition.

Rubke said the brothers can be more aggressive with each other than they are with their other teammates, which can be distracting during practice so he has to separate them.

“But sometimes it’s fun because they’re both good enough to beat each other on a rep… They also just know how to push each other’s buttons because they’ve lived with each other their whole lives,” Rubke said.

“He does all the dirty work, essentially,” Cooper said. “I like to pride myself on defense first, when offense always comes second.”

He referenced his dad when talking about the mentality, “Defense wins championships. Offense sells tickets,” which still guides him today.

“And he’s kind of my backup as well,” Robbie added. “Like, I shoot a ball and miss on offense, then he guards my man. I usually get beat.”

Their constant back-and-forth has made them stronger individually and as teammates.

Rubke said both players have shown maturity in how they handle adversity.

Robbie brings a lot of intensity and uses the physical side of his position as fuel, while Cooper is quieter and quick to own his mistakes, signaling to the coach when he knows he missed something.

“They both take criticism well and just embrace it, ‘Yes, coach,’ and get back in there,” he said.

Beyond the pool, both are business majors with different ambitions. Cooper hopes to become an accountant and earn his CPA license, while Robbie is interested in real estate and finance.

They plan to transfer next year, possibly to different universities. Although they might be at different schools, the brothers said they still hope to stay connected to the sport.

They talked about joining a club or intramural water polo team after ECC.

“It’ll be sad,” Cooper said. “It would be a good experience, though, because we’ve never been separated,” Robbie added.

When they’re not studying or practicing, the twins hang out with teammates, catch movies and look forward to snowboarding trips in the winter.

“We don’t go out a ton,” Robbie said. “We just hang out with the team, get food, watch movies, nothing too much. We just chill.”

As their journey at El Camino comes to an end, the Josic twins know the memories they’ve made will be with them forever.

“It’s in and out the pool. Like, all the memories we’ve made. Even in high school and now, I feel like we’ll always remember, like small little things. Like, I can’t think of it now, but I know maybe next year, I’ll be thinking back to small little things that happen, It’ll just make us laugh,” Robbie said.

Those little moments, the jokes, the plays, and the time spent side by side, are what they’ll carry with them long after the final game.