This post was updated April 27 at 7:35 p.m.

Editor’s note: This article contains mentions of sexual abuse against a minor.

There are some things more important than ranking, talent and winning.

UCLA’s men’s water polo team is perhaps the best in the nation, hot off its 13th national title this past December. The program recently recruited a star high school player, likely hoping to maintain its top position.

But after his recruitment, the media discovered that the recruit was arrested in February 2024. As part of a plea deal with prosecutors, he admitted in November to sexual penetration with a foreign object against a minor, with one of two charges of the same crime being dropped per the plea deal, according to the Southern California News Group.

UCLA has the opportunity to correct this mistake and withdraw his recruitment offer before the player becomes a stain on the program’s reputation and culture, regardless of how well he performs in the pool.

The player spent his senior season at Newport Harbor High School, where he helped secure a California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section title for his team and found individual success on the 2024 USA Water Polo men’s youth national team. He had demonstrated himself as a strong player, and there was a good chance he would become a bright spot as part of any water polo program, let alone UCLA’s star-studded roster.

But before transferring to Newport Harbor High School, the recruit was a student at Harvard-Westlake School. In February 2024, while attending this school, he was arrested. In November, he admitted to the offense of sexual penetration with a foreign object (digital penetration) against a minor during a Los Angeles County Juvenile Court hearing, according to the SCNG.

On top of his criminal charges, he is alleged to have repeatedly directed racial slurs at several Harvard-Westlake teammates and was suspended for two games because of his behavior, the SCNG reported.

The SCNG released its investigation into the student’s conduct in March, after he committed to UCLA’s men’s water polo program.

UCLA has yet to make it clear whether the university was aware of the water polo athlete’s admission of a sex offense against a former teammate prior to his recruitment.

“Due to privacy concerns, UCLA does not comment on individual admissions decisions,” UCLA Athletics said in an emailed statement.

Nevertheless, the university claims to be upholding its values despite its public inaction.

“We take any allegations of misconduct regarding current or prospective students seriously, including in the admissions process,” UCLA Athletics said in the emailed statement. “UCLA remains committed to fostering a safe and supportive environment for all members of our athletics programs and campus community.”

The inescapable fact is, however, either that UCLA coaches and administrators did not know what the student-athlete admitted to before bringing this recruit onto the team – or worse, they knew and chose to bring the recruit on regardless.

But there is no excuse now. Now that the world knows about these actions, UCLA must withdraw its recruitment of the player. There are some choices that are more important than protecting our No. 1 ranking.

UCLA’s lack of care, and now its failure to take corrective action, in the recruitment of an athlete who admitted to sexual misconduct reveals a corrupt prioritization of results and trophies, rather than the safety and fairness of its athletes and program.

Regardless, this is information that should have been known and flagged as against the university’s core values.

Yet, since this information has been made public, there has been no widely public corrective action from UCLA, again failing to consider the best interests of its athletes and student body. Now that UCLA has explicitly been made aware of its athlete’s juvenile record, it is doubtless what its next steps should be: an immediate withdrawal of his recruitment offer.

His recruitment puts into question whether the university truly values equality and the safety of other athletes, proving potentially inconsistent with Title IX policies and UCLA’s commitment to preventing sexual violence and racial discrimination. It also rewards crude and illicit behavior, establishing a precedent of leniency toward a perpetrator without regard for justice and the victim’s trauma.

Even before the athlete’s recruitment, UCLA should have known of his past criminal offenses and alleged discriminatory conduct, and its ignorance reveals a grave oversight, if not an intentional disregard.

Now, UCLA’s continued failure to withdraw the offer of recruitment is a wholehearted act of disrespect to both the integrity of its program and to victims of abuse.

Its own students and the actualization of due justice should be its greatest concern, not championship titles.

This flagrant misjudgment reveals the need for UCLA to clarify where its priorities lie: in students or in sports.