Pride on his side burns

  KEITH ENRIQUEZ/ Daily Bruin Senior Staff Two-meter
Matt Flesher’s devotion to his sideburns is only
rivaled by that which he shows for his teammates.

By Pauline Vu
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

The whole UCLA men’s water polo team agrees. Matt
Flesher’s sideburns are ugggg-ly.

“He basically looks like he came off the street,”
said senior Blake Wellen.

“We always tease him about it because they’re so
ugly,” said senior Adam Wright.

“Disgusting,” said senior Sean Kern, a shudder in
his voice. “He’s the only one with a goatee, too, but
at least he combs it on a regular basis.”

They’re so ugly that one night in Hawaii, where the team
was training before the season started, Wellen snuck over to
Flesher’s room while he was sleeping and shaved a sideburn
off.

Just one.

“It’s something I felt was necessary at the
time,” Wellen said.

But Flesher, for reasons his teammates can only guess at,
refused to shave the other one.

“Because he’s a real man,” Kern said when
asked why he thought Flesher kept the lone sideburn. “It
makes him look scary to his opponents.”

“It’s a pure pride thing. He loves those things as
much as he loves his mom,” Wellen said.

Well, Wellen got the pride part right.

“I pretty much wasn’t gonna let anyone get the best
of me,” Flesher said. “I’m stubborn like
that.”

If there’s one thing Matt Flesher doesn’t lack,
it’s the self-confidence it takes to walk around with a
single sideburn and still hold your head high.

He’s especially needed that confidence this season as one
of only two sophomores who start on a NCAA championship-bound team.
On a starting lineup that includes six seniors, Flesher is the only
sophomore who starts out in the field (Brandon Brooks, the other
sophomore, is the goalie).

Still, this season Flesher has only started while another key
Bruin was missing; first, while Sean Kern was in Sydney playing for
the United States and now, as Adam Wright’s eligibility is
gone.

But according to his teammates, Flesher has stepped up
admirably.

“He plays like Kurt Rambis,” senior Andy Bailey
said, referring to the former Los Angeles Laker forward.
“He’s an all-out kind of player, going after every
loose ball. He just plays with complete emotion.”

That emotion is more evident in Flesher than in any of his
teammates. When Flesher scores a goal, he doesn’t just score
a goal, he leaps so high out of the pool you can see his suit, he
pumps both his fists, and he points at the crowd and the Bruin
bench.

“His enthusiasm is probably more than any other player on
our team,” Wellen said. “It really does something for
the momentum of the team.”

Flesher’s emotion has inspired the team in other ways as
well.

The day before last season’s NCAA Championship, Flesher
got up before the team and made a speech his teammates still
remember.

He had seen an interview with Dan Marino on SportsCenter the
week before, and what struck him the most about that segment was
that Marino never got a second chance after he lost his first and
only Super Bowl his rookie season.

After the game, Marino said he felt bad for some of his
teammates who were playing their last game, but expressed
confidence that he would be back in the Super Bowl someday.

“And lo and behold, he never made it to the Super Bowl
again,” Flesher said. “And I was thinking, hindsight
being 20-20, maybe that (season) was my only opportunity to win the
NCAA Championship.

“Something that (UCLA coaches) Guy Baker and Adam
Krikorian stress is that, as players, we only have four years to
win an NCAA title,” Flesher continued. “I guess the
only thing I know for certain in my life is that the sun rises in
the east and sets in the west. I never knew if I was gonna have an
opportunity to win (after) last year. I was fired up, living a
dream.”

The speech wasn’t planned. The coaches didn’t say,
“OK, Flesher has something to say.” On a team where the
players are hesitant to name a clear-cut leader, the time was right
for a non-starting redshirt freshman to speak up.

“I won’t say I’m a leader of anything. I think
certain people need to rise up at certain times. Especially on this
team, somebody always comes through,” Flesher said.

This turbulent season, it’s been Flesher. He took care of
the starting duties while Kern was away, and then didn’t
start for five games after Kern came back.

But that’s when disaster struck for the team.

Wright was declared ineligible by UCLA when it was revealed that
because of a misunderstanding, he’d never filed for a medical
redshirt his true freshman year. Despite his attempts to get it
back, the NCAA forced Wright to be permanently ineligible.

Throughout the whole situation, Flesher supported Wright. At
Sunday’s awards ceremony after the Bruins won the conference
championship, Wright was the only player not recognized. But when
the announcer called for the “team captain” to accept
the trophy, Flesher pulled Wright forward to accept the award.
Wright took it, held it high, and then hugged Flesher.

When asked if he was surprised by the gesture, Wright said,
“I was surprised, sure, but I wasn’t surprised at the
person who did it. That’s just Flesh to a T.”

But in the meantime, the team needed someone to play for Wright.
And for the second time this season, Flesher stepped up.

Behind Wright and senior Brian Brown, Flesher is the
team’s third-leading scorer with 32 goals. Not only that, but
he manages that while playing 2-meter defense, a position that
doesn’t score as often as others.

“It’s very extraordinary that you find someone
who’s such a stellar shot,” said Wellen, who plays the
same position. “Normally, I’m not as involved in the
offense.”

Because of this, they call Flesher “shooter.”

His defense is also something that gets his teammates talking.
At 2-meter defense, Flesher matches up against the other
team’s biggest and best. In Sunday’s conference
championship game against Cal, Flesher held Jerry Smith, one of the
best 2-meter men in the nation, scoreless.

Still, Flesher calls his recent starts bittersweet.

“There’s probably no sweetness in it at all,”
he said. “Adam’s one of my best friends. He plays with
more heart and desire than anybody I’ve ever seen. He’s
a leader and he’s someone I definitely follow but I can never
be.”

That isn’t true, according to Wright.

“I’m happy that he’s getting this opportunity
to fill in for me,” Wright said. “It kinda cheered me
up. I like the fact that he’s getting in the starting lineup.
I have full confidence in him and all the teammates do,
too.”

The season’s nearly over, yet Flesher, known for taking
revenge, still hasn’t gotten Wellen back for shaving his
sideburn. In fact, Wellen was just wondering a few days ago when
retribution would come ““ if it ever does.

“He doesn’t have the cajones,” Wellen
said.

Kern agreed.

“Matt has to know his place on the team. Blake’s a
senior and he’s only a sophomore. We’re a little higher
up on the totem pole,” he said.

But Wellen should probably watch his back anyway. Flesher
didn’t play like a senior all season to get treated like a
sophomore now.

Especially when it involves touching his sideburns.