The No. 4 UCLA men’s water polo team is preparing for this weekend’s matchups with No. 3 Stanford and No. 8 UC Santa Barbara against the backdrop of a long history of excellent water polo from all three schools, especially Stanford and UCLA.
The Cardinal has won 10 national championships, second only to the Cal Golden Bears, while the Bruins have won eight. Stanford has also lost the national title game 10 times, with the Bruins losing nine.
UCSB has also long had a strong water polo program and is one of the only seven teams to have won a national title since the first NCAA championship in 1969.
Neither UCLA nor Stanford has won a title in the past 10 years, although the Bruins made an NCAA championship appearance as recently as 2012. The Cardinal, on the other hand, hasn’t played for a national title since falling to USC in 2008 in the first of six consecutive Trojan titles.
“The athletes always hear it from the coaches, but for the athletes to hear it from their teammates who’ve been through the ring of fire – who’ve played for a national championship – to have those guys give (the younger athletes) their perspective, it’s really helpful,” said coach Adam Wright of the team’s more experienced members.
Agreeing with Wright, senior attacker Paul Reynolds said that having played for a national title has affected his approach to marquee contests.
“Playing those big games gives you confidence in big games in the future and big games in the present,” Reynolds said. “You draw upon those experiences to help you.”
The Bruins have also had some of the strongest staying power of the top water polo programs, having won titles in the ’70s, ’90s and early 2000s, on top of winning the first championship game in 1969.
For the athletes, playing for such a historic program means a lot.
“It’s an honor, every day. Those four letters mean a lot more than any of us do,” junior utility Danny McClintick said.
Part of that strong water polo tradition has been UCLA’s production of Olympians. Both the current men’s and women’s coaches, Wright and Brandon Brooks, were on the silver medal-winning US national team at the Beijing Olympics.
Wright also played in 2012 in London, although the team did not medal. In total, the men’s program at UCLA has produced 29 Olympic water polo players and four coaches, many of whom appeared at multiple games, and a plethora of Olympic medals.
All those medals and Olympians are in the past, while the No. 3 team in the country is in the future, which is where the team’s focus is now.
“There’s a lot of things we need to sharpen up,” Wright said as the team got ready to plunge into practice on Tuesday evening.