Wednesday, April 10, 1996
Maryland natives find new homes playing at UCLABy Mark J.
Dittmer
Daily Bruin Contributor
The UCLA women’s water polo team recruits mostly from
California. But occasionally, some players from elsewhere come to
UCLA for a look at the school. And on especially lucky occasions
for Bruin head coach Guy Baker, two players from outside of the
state will visit Los Angeles to take a look.
On that note, one of Baker’s luckiest days came during the
summer of 1994. He got a call that morning from Mandy McAloon and
Catherine von Schwarz, who were looking at schools from their homes
in Maryland.
It seemed even more lucky that the two were close friends, so
they would hopefully come as a package deal, purposely choosing the
same school. Actually, von Schwarz and McAloon had promised their
parents to avoid talking about choice of schools with each other,
so that they could make their choices independently.
If they hadn’t made such an agreement, it’s likely that these
two, who both start for the Bruins as freshmen, would have strongly
influenced one another. You see, they go way back.
McAloon and von Schwarz first knew each other through swimming,
not water polo. Von Schwartz started playing water polo around age
11, and being on the water polo team required that she swim in the
off-season. During one of her first off-seasons swimming, she spent
a lot of time with McAloon, a swimmer, and before you knew it, they
were good friends.
"They were like, ‘Oh, we’re playing polo,’" McAloon remembered.
"Actually, Catherine was one of the people that made me start
playing."
"She didn’t like it at first," von Schwarz said. "We made her
stay".
The team was a club team  the Annapolis Water Polo Club
Team  and it practiced once or twice every day, and travelled
on weekends. It was serious, but competition was hard to find. Most
high schools in the area had no teams, and there were very few
other club teams.
The Annapolis Club women’s team made up for it with games
against college teams in the area, including current defending
champion, Slippery Rock. They also played a lot with the Annapolis
Club men’s team. The busy schedule brought together the people
involved.
"We were together every night from since we started until our
senior year," von Schwarz said. "We were away on weekends. We had
friends at school, but our friends were at swimming. That’s who we
hung out with, because we didn’t have much time other than the
pool. We were like a family, brothers and sisters."
Besides becoming a close-knit family through all of the
extensive practice, the team also improved a lot at water polo
 a more obvious function of practice. The Annapolis Club Team
won the junior national championships in the summer of 1995. And,
after just a few years with the team, both players knew that a lot
of their future lay in water polo. And water polo was in the
West.
Then there was that lucky morning for Guy Baker, when they
called him and expressed their interest in UCLA. They ended up
going to the same place, thanks partly to coincidence, and partly
because they were looking for the same things in a school, things
that UCLA had.
So von Schwarz and McAloon, like Daniel Boone and the original
pioneers, have packed up and moved west, with the promise of a
better life ahead of them. And also like the original pioneers,
they can still count on each other in hard times.
"It’s sort of like sisters," von Schwarz said. "We don’t really
see each other as much as we did before, but if one of us has a
problem, we know that the other one will be there for us."
Their bond transfers to playing water polo. McAloon explains,
"She’s two-meter offense and I’m two-meter defense so we have to
scrimmage against each other a lot in practice. I defend her
position. Then when I go to play with her in a game, she knows all
my steal moves."
When McAloon tries one of those steal moves, von Schwarz will
see it right away, and can try to swim ahead to the other team’s
goal, anticipating a successful steal.
Besides playing together, the two can obviously play in their
own rights.
"They’re both great," UCLA assistant coach Leslie Storey said.
"Catherine is exceptionally strong, and she’s also very big, so
that makes her very hard to guard Mandy has great legs, which is
very important since she’s our primary two-meter defender."
They may be more publicly linked by their playing ability, but
they will be more permanently linked by their shared past.
"We talk about missing home sometimes," von Schwarz said. "We
had our group and our team … everything was so perfect."
PATRICK LAM /Daily Bruin
It seems natural that Catherine von Schwarz would end up playing
polo at UCLA with …
PATRICK LAM /Daily Bruin
… longtime friend Mandy McAloon.