UCLA ready for play time at season-opening tournament

Friday, February 6, 1998

UCLA ready for play time at season-opening tournament

UCLA anticipates tough game against formidable teams

By Steve Kim

Daily Bruin Contributor

As two-time defending national champions, the UCLA women’s water
polo team will start its journey to a three-peat as it opens its
season this afternoon at the UC San Diego Tournament. Twelve teams
are involved in this three-day tournament which starts today. By
process of elimination, one team will come out on top by Sunday
evening.

For the preliminaries, the Bruins are scheduled to play San Jose
State on Friday at 2 p.m. and UCSD on Saturday at 11 a.m. With San
Jose State debuting its varsity water polo team and UCSD being
fairly "young," UCLA is favored to advance.

The Bruins will continue later Saturday to play either UC Santa
Barbara or San Diego State at 5 p.m. Semi-finals will be played
Sunday and the final game to determine the tournament champion will
be played at 5 p.m.

The Bruins enter this season ranked No. 1. Featured on the deep,
talented squad are star goalie Nicolle Payne and driver Coralie
Simmons. Having come back from representing the U.S. with the
National team in the recent World Championships, Payne and Simmons
share confidence and experience with an already confident and
experienced team.

Going into the first competition of the season, UCLA head coach
Guy Baker looks forward to testing the waters.

Baker said, "We’ll see how well we’ll play. We have some new
players and we’ll see if they can carry out what they practiced in
the pool.

"It’s a coming-out party for all the teams, so we’re also going
to see what the other teams have. We want to play as well as we’ve
been practicing. When we’re done with the tournament, you see where
you are and evaluate what you need to do."

Other formidable teams include No. 2 Cal, No. 3 Stanford and No.
4 San Diego State. Last year, the Aztecs came close to beating the
Bruins, and Baker says any one of these teams can beat them on any
given day.

The fact that there has been a lot of strong competition is
indicative of the increase in the popularity of women’s water polo.
There has been more enthusiasm for the sport since it was announced
that women’s water polo will be an official Olympic sport in the
year 2000.

It’s well-deserved recognition for a women’s sport which
suffered from lack of participation at the collegiate level several
years ago. Now, more colleges like San Jose State are adding
varsity women’s water polo to their athletic program. Coach Baker
remembers the time when the sport was starting in the collegiate
level.

"When we first started, we were barely scratching to get an
eight team tournament," Baker said. "And now, we have to eliminate
teams to get the number down to twelve."

As the favorite team, the Bruin squad refuses be eliminated
easily. It will likely be the eliminator instead.

Baker said his players have been preparing for a long time
without competing. They are ready and have been restless for their
season debut. Wind them up and let ’em go: It’s time to play.