Rollercoaster season ends with national championship

  NICOLE MILLER/Daily Bruin Senior Blake
Wellen prepares to pass the ball as the Bruins snag the
title at the NCAA championships.

By Rekha Rao
Daily Bruin Contributor

For the UCLA men’s water polo team, this season has been
like no other. The season started with the team missing head coach
Guy Baker and senior Sean Kern to the Olympics for the first couple
games and ended with the team losing senior captain Adam Wright the
last few games due to NCAA ineligibility.

Yet the Bruins still won the championship.

“The one last year was great, and this one was just as
good. This championship showed how much of a team we really
are,” Kern said. “Each of the five seniors playing (in
the final game) scored and that showed how much of a team we really
are.”

Baker said that it did not matter who the team played, if they
continued to play defense and play their game, they would win.

And win they did. Before the forfeit of five games because of
Wright’s ineligibility, the Bruins held a 22-2 record and
were the top-ranked team in the nation.

The Bruins started off the season with a jump. They beat
Pepperdine in the Wasko Tournament, but fell to UC Irvine the next
weekend. The Anteaters, the only team to beat UCLA outright twice,
were a problem for the Bruins during the season.

  NICOLE MILLER/Daily Bruin Junior Kyle
Baumgarner raises the ball high in the air during the NCAA
title game, in which the Bruins beat the UCSD Tritons. “This
is a part of athletics. You are always going to have losses and get
better. We were disappointed but we had to move on,”
Krikorian said.

UCLA played crosstown rival USC four times and beat them in
three of the contests. The first meeting was in the Southern
California Tournament on Sept. 17, where the Bruins lost to the
then-No. 1 Trojans 5-4. In their second meeting, with Kern’s
help on Oct. 7, the Bruins easily won 7-5. The Bruins won again
(6-5) on Nov. 18 at the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center, right before the
UCLA-USC football game.

“It is fun to play at the Rose Bowl. We were really fired
up to play,” sophomore goalie Brandon Brooks said.

The two teams met one more time in a non-conference game. There
the Bruins again prevailed 6-5.

No other team besides UCI and USC stood a chance against the
Bruins.

Six graduating seniors ““ Kern, Wright, Dave Parker, Andy
Bailey, Blake Wellen, and Brian Brown ““ led UCLA through this
winning season.

This tight-knit group acted more like family than teammates, and
provided leadership the team needed.

Covering most of the goal, literally and figuratively, Brooks
held the defense together for the Bruins.

“He is definitely the best goalie in the nation right
now,” Baker said.

With a month left in their season and postseason, tragedy struck
for UCLA.

Wright was declared ineligible by the NCAA due to a redshirt
infraction committed during his freshman year. He had played in one
quarter of one game before hurting his shoulder, and sat out the
rest of the season as a medical redshirt. Due to a
misunderstanding, however, the redshirt papers were never
filed.

Despite legal efforts to renew his position on the team, the
Bruins had to face the reality of the NCAA decision. This was a
major blow for the team, who looked to Wright for inspiration and
guidance. He was made the voluntary undergraduate assistant coach
and continued to practice with the team.

“This has been such a motivating factor for us. We would
all rather lose and have Adam (Wright) play, than win and have him
not play,” Baker said. “We focused and overcame some
obstacles, and I think we did good in that area.”

Next came the MPSF tournament, with the winner of the tournament
getting the conference’s automatic berth to the Final Four.
One other MPSF team would get an at-large berth to the Final Four.
Although the Bruins were the No. 2 seed at the tournament, they
weren’t depending on an at-large berth to get into the NCAA
Tournament. Especially not when they had four games taken away from
them as penalty for playing Wright.

So UCLA stormed through the tournament, soundly beating Pacific
and Pepperdine in the first two rounds, and narrowly beating Cal
6-5 to take the MPSF title and the automatic berth to the Final
Four.

There the team beat Navy in the semifinals, setting up a finals
matchup against UC San Diego of the Western Water Polo
Association.

At NCAA finals, Wright talked to the team before the game and
stood on the sidelines to watch his team play. But after the game,
while accepting the NCAA trophy, all the players pushed Wright
forward to accept it, and made him hold the trophy for team
pictures.

“I can’t be more proud as a captain of this team. I
don’t like sitting on the bench and shaking the entire game,
but I know this group of guys,” Wright said. “We are
all best friends, and they would do anything for me, and I would do
the same. None of the emotion shocked me.”

All in all, it was a bittersweet year for men’s water polo
at UCLA. They showed the school and the world that they could
overcome obstacles and still beat the competition.

“This is the craziest season I have ever been a part
of,” Krikorian said.

“We have been through a lot as a team. It has been
emotional and trying at times. We have stuck together through it
all, and that is what is special about this team.”