Pro future precarious for many graduating athletes

  Daily Bruin File Photo Senior outside hitter
Kristee Porter torched the USPV as part of the
Chicago Thunder to earn the Offensive Player of the Year honor.

By Jeff Agase
Daily Bruin Staff
[email protected]

While most UCLA seniors trudge through want ads or ashamedly ask
their parents to clean out their old rooms in preparation of stays
of indefinite length, senior athletes are doing their best to make
sure they have no offseason.

And while Dan Gadzuric sits in front of a television, waiting to
see which NBA team will be paying him millions next year, most
former Bruin athletes will be in places like Grand Rapids, Mich.,
playing in front of small crowds and signing autographs for adoring
little kids.

Such is the newfound professional life of athletes in many of
the “non-revenue” (read: not football or men’s
basketball) sports. Not all of UCLA’s professional-level
talent chooses to play at the next level, but those who do often
find themselves in unfamiliar territory.

Accustomed to raucous crowds and effortless success, many now
find themselves smaller fish in a significantly bigger pond.

Take women’s soccer player Mary-Frances Monroe. A
perennial All-American, she was drafted in the second round of the
Women’s United Soccer Association by the Philadelphia Charge.
Before, she looked across the midfield line and saw mostly inferior
opposition.

Now, she sees Mia Hamm.

“Every day, your position is on the line,” Monroe
said. “It’s not like college, where you have a bad
practice and everything can still be fine.”

Monroe has seen action in six games, starting three and tallying
a goal on her only shot of the year. But the baby-faced forward is
still having problems looking the part.

“We were walking through an airport with these huge yellow
backpacks, and someone asked if we were a high school team,”
she said. “And my teammate Heather Mitts turns around and
asks, “˜Can we get “˜Philadelphia Charge’ printed
on these things because we have a five-year-old on the team and
everyone thinks we’re a high school team?'”

Attendance at the three Charge home games has yet to top 9,000,
but it probably beats taking finals this week. Because the WUSA
season started in mid-April, Monroe was forced to withdraw from
school until next fall.

  Daily Bruin File Photo Midfielder Breana
Boling must search the want ads as she wasn’t drafted by
the WUSA like fellow seniors Mary-Frances Monroe and Stephanie
Rigamat.

“I’m going to get my degree no matter what,”
Monroe said.

As Monroe fights for playing time, former women’s
volleyball standout Kristee Porter stormed through the inaugural
season of the United States Professional Volleyball League.

Starting at outside hitter for the Chicago Thunder, Porter did
everything but win the league championship. Her statistics (led the
USPV in scoring and kills, now holds a dizzying array of records)
and accolades (USPV Offensive Player of the Year, two-time Player
of the Week) suggest she tried to do so single-handedly,
though.

“The minute you saw Kristee Porter on the floor, you knew
she was going to be something special,” USPV director of
media relations Mike Miazga said. “She could dust the ceiling
of the gym if she wanted to ““ she jumps that high.”

The USPV began this season with just four teams, concentrated in
the midwestern cities of Chicago, Grand Rapids, Minneapolis, and
St. Louis. Six more teams will join in 2003, and the league hopes
to eventually grow to 20 teams.

The average capacity of USPV arenas was 2,950, and over 200
people were turned away from the Thunder’s final home game.
Miazga said there has always been a strong market for a league with
its vision.

“The biggest misconception with us is that we are a minor
league,” he said. “We’re the highest caliber of
competition in our particular sport, the same level as professional
baseball, football or basketball.

“Also, we are the first U.S. pro sports league that
preceded a men’s league in the same sport.”

Meanwhile, Bruin softball players wait for the resurrection of
the Women’s Professional Softball League, which all but
disappeared after the 2000 Sydney Olympics when it became
essentially a practice league for the U.S. National Team.

Last year, the top players of the WPSL and former Olympians went
on a barnstorming tour across the country as the WPSL All-Stars
Gold Team, promoting the return of the league, which is slated for
2003.

It’ll be one of basically only two options for senior
standouts, according to softball sports information director Amy
Symons.

“If you’re a high-level softball player and want to
play beyond college and the national team, and the WPSL
doesn’t pan out, it has to be Japan, where they have a
professional league,” she said.

Japan? Hey, it beats the want ads.