Coming into the season, UCLA men’s water polo had everything going for it.
Seven returning All-Americans, a returning Cutino Award-winning goalie, a Rio Olympian and, perhaps most importantly, years of playing alongside one another.
But at the conclusion of the conference season two weeks ago, there were still signs of rust. The No. 2 Bruins were down three goals to No. 3 California with little over a quarter to play.
Then the many years of experience playing with each other became evident – a UCLA offensive outburst put five goals up in eight minutes of play to tie the game, which it eventually won in overtime.
Redshirt junior attacker Max Irving, senior defender Chancellor Ramirez and senior attacker Ryder Roberts passed fluidly along the perimeter, shifting over to give senior attacker Patrick Fellner time and space to pump fake, pump fake, pump fake and shoot.
Coaches teach that sequence in the earliest stages of water polo careers, but that cohesion, that comfort – that’s something that’s helped UCLA change the status quo of collegiate water polo.
[Related: Patrick Fellner’s trend-defying journey from NorCal to UCLA water polo]
Two years ago, USC was in the middle of a six-year national championship win streak. This class not only helped bring an end to that, but won the 2015 title as well and strung together a 57-game win streak in the process, breaking the NCAA water polo consecutive wins record.
The players will say it’s a result of the way they play in the system coach Adam Wright has put into place, but they’ve been competing together long before they came to UCLA.
“All of us together had been on the national team up until our freshman year in college, since we were all 14,” Ramirez said. “We just all had a close bond, we’ve all played with each other for lots of years, so I think we just wanted to carry that on to college.”
Four years ago, 13 members of the Youth National Team went to Perth, Australia, to compete in the first FINA Youth Water Polo World Championships. Come college, the talent on those rosters often goes in separate ways.
But not that year – the majority of it went to one place. Ramirez, Roberts, Irving, Fellner, junior center Matt Farmer and redshirt sophomore attacker Kent Inoue all committed to four more years with each other, and with redshirt seniors goalie Garrett Danner and center Alec Zwaneveld, who were already at UCLA.
“It was really cool having all of us together for the first time, for what was going to be the future of UCLA,” Danner said of the 2012 trip.
At the start of their first game Down Under, however, only two of the high school recruits had committed – Ramirez and Fellner. Everyone else’s decisions were still up in the air.
But Wright, food-poisoned and just days off a loss in the 2012 national championship to USC, crossed the Pacific to watch each of them play.
“I’ll never forget my trip to Perth,” Wright said. “It wasn’t the greatest trip to take at the greatest time, just coming off losing in ’12, but (I’m) so glad I ended up going.”
It was a concluding move to years of recruiting. Eight of the 13 people on the Youth National Team eventually committed, setting the groundwork for the results UCLA has seen the past few years.
But, as Ramirez said, the history of the group doesn’t start with the 2012 team.
*****
Many of the players who went to Perth saw each other often throughout the high school season.
Inoue started as a freshman at Mater Dei in 2010, the first year of what would become a four-year winning streak that demolished California Interscholastic Federation records. En route, his team beat Zwaneveld and Harvard-Westlake, Danner and El Toro, Ramirez and Loyola, and Irving and Long Beach Wilson regularly.
Of all of the wins against his future teammates, Inoue remembers the CIF Southern Section championship game from his freshman year most of all.
“It was me and (senior center Patrick Woepse) on varsity,” Inoue said. “It was really cool just having us two play with each other, having to play a game against El Toro … I got a goal against Danner that game, so I have a good memory of that.”
Inoue ended up winning 103 consecutive games in his four years at Mater Dei, etching his school into the history books, which Ramirez nearly did for his alma mater as well.
To this day, Loyola High School has never made a CIF-SS finals appearance in men’s water polo. The team got closer than it ever had in Ramirez’s sophomore year.
The Cubs were 29-0 entering the playoffs, and favored to win, according to the defender. The only thing standing in their way from making the finals was El Toro – the team with Danner and redshirt senior attacker Joey Fuentes.
“We were up the whole game until the fourth quarter, and then we just kind of got complacent and let the lead go, and ultimately lost in the last two seconds when Joey hit a last second shot,” Ramirez said. “Garrett buckled it down in the goal, and then Joey hit the game-winning goal.”
As the years went on and Ramirez continued to pile up awards, coaches assumed he was another all-star lock for USC.
“My head coach, assistant coaches (at Loyola) all went to USC, won national championships there, they would bring in ex-USC players to come and train with us,” Ramirez said. “They definitely did influence us through their play and accomplishments in the water to maybe go to USC.”
A lot of his older friends on the team ended up becoming Trojans, much like Inoue’s teammates on Mater Dei as well, and contributed to their six-time national championship win streak.
Nikola Vavic, USC coach Jovan Vavic’s son and second on the all-time USC scoring list, was a senior when Ramirez was a freshman on the varsity team, but the relationships the defender had made outside of high school ended up factoring into his ultimate decision more.
“Through communication with Adam and the history, we just talked about with these guys who went to Australia – and more of them – kind of overall persuaded me to come here,” Ramirez said. “Adam really had a set plan for us so that really persuaded me also to come here.”
Now at UCLA, rather than trying to score on Danner and make Loyola history, his sole job is protecting him, taking away the high-percentage opportunities out of center as best he can from the most sizable threats in the pool.
“It was great having him with me on the national team, and then he came here and I knew it was going to be great having him,” Danner said. “I feel very comfortable with him guarding everyone in front of me, it makes my life a lot easier. That’s always good.”
Others didn’t get to see each other as much, if at all, during the high school season. Farmer was in Illinois, Fellner was in Northern California and Roberts played for Vista High School in San Diego.
[Related: Matt Farmer brings in water polo expertise from the Midwest]
They all got to reunite in Perth, however, where Roberts led all USA players with 14 total goals.
He now sits at 156 career collegiate goals, the seventh-best in UCLA men’s water polo history. Should he score six more in his final two games this weekend, he’ll tie Fernando Carsalade for sixth – but Roberts nearly never even played the sport.
Roberts followed his brother into water polo after an injury sidelined him from playing football, basketball, baseball and wrestling about 10 years ago, according to his high school and one of his club coaches Dave Spence.
“You could tell back then that he was going to end up being a really good college player,” Spence said. “I think (national coaches) saw that, plus being left-handed gives you a huge advantage.”
Everybody needs a good lefty, he continued.
*****
The day after losing their first game of the FINA Youth World Championships to Hungary, the world’s most historically dominant country in the sport, by only one goal, the future Bruins gathered around a projector to watch the 2012 national championship game.
UCLA had a one-goal advantage with three minutes to go, but dropped the game to USC in closing seconds
“The losses all hurt,” Wright said after the game. “But this one really hurts.”
Danner, Zwaneveld, Fellner and Ramirez watched their current and future team fall by one goal to a perennial powerhouse, just like they had. For those who hadn’t committed, it was just another bout between two of the best programs in the country, both of which that were trying to collect them.
Rather than waiting for them to get back to the United States like other coaches, however, to continue communicating his interest, Wright made the nearly day-long journey to watch them play in Australia almost immediately.
“Other than Adam, I think Merrill Moses might have been there from Pepperdine,” said Dustin Litvak, the assistant coach for the Perth team and former UCLA men’s water polo assistant coach. “I don’t think there were any other coaches there.”
Those on the team were surprised to see him, to say the least.
“I think (that) may have swung a lot of them,” Litvak said. “They obviously just came off a pretty tough loss, and then (Wright) also got food poisoning, and then he got on the plane a day later and flew all the way to Perth. I think that showed the guys a lot.”
Ramirez concurred, and said it quite possibly influenced the majority of the Youth National Team to eventually commit to UCLA.
Roberts, one of the biggest pieces of the senior class’ success, hadn’t made up his mind as to where he wanted to go at that time. Spence, who made the trip to Perth himself, said he was pretty sure deep down that Roberts wanted to go to UCLA, and that was before Wright even showed up.
“Certainly helped, absolutely,” Spence said. “Smart of him to do that, and it’s not much of a bummer to go to Perth.”
That trip was also where Wright met his future 6-foot-7, 240-pound senior starting center Gordon Marshall, who scored the game winner in the 2014 national championship game to break USC’s six-year long streak.
“We were in communication with everyone long before that tournament except Gordon,” Wright said. “That’s where the connection started, which almost didn’t happen. Ended up being such a huge (piece) for where we are today.”
Before the 2016 campaign started, he had drawn 151 career exclusions for the Bruins, but back then, Marshall was just the catalyst of Australia’s one-goal comeback victory against USA. He didn’t know his opponents would become his future teammates, but he did know Danner, who the center gave a hard time after he scored two goals in the fourth quarter.
“It’s always good to beat the Americans,” Marshall said. “I had no idea who they were at the time, they had just committed, but I had no idea who they were.”
After that game, the trip was supposed to be over – the culmination of many long years playing together was coming to an end like much of the team’s high school careers did just weeks before.
The morning after the team’s final game, the players were packed and ready to go their separate ways.
“It was the last time that we knew we were going to see each other before college,” Roberts said.
Their bus never came, however, so they spent an entire day in Sydney, further building on the relationships that had already been established through years of playing against and with each other.
“Just hanging out, not thinking about water polo for once was pretty stress relieving,” Roberts said. “It was just fun.”
They never would have gotten to do any of it had the bus been on time, Litvak said.
Now, nearing the four-year anniversary of that trip, it’s no surprise to many just how much the group has accomplished. The comeback against Cal on Nov. 18th is nothing next to the national championships and NCAA records the nine players in Perth have helped UCLA garner.
“This group has so much experience, they have a lot of chemistry playing together, there’s talent at every position,” Litvak said. “I think a lot of people saw this coming, and hopefully they can finish it off on a high note. It’s a really special group.”
Spence echoed much of the same.
“We saw them for years growing up and playing good water polo on all the different teams they were on,” Spence said. “Those kids are all remarkable water polo players and putting them all together, man, that’s a powerhouse.”
But with just one more weekend where they’ll all be playing on the same team, the clock is ticking. Wright said he tries not to think about that – he doesn’t want to do that to himself.
Their careers together haven’t been just the four or five years they’ve had at UCLA, but include four or five years leading up to their start in Westwood as well, by Ramirez’s estimation.
“It’s really hard to think about because this group has truly been so special,” Wright said. “For me, the thing is I don’t want to put a timestamp on it, I’m fully aware of just how fortunate I am, but at the same time, we talk about just trying to take advantage of every minute we have together.”
He can only dream of having a better group, he said.
“It’s really hard to try and keep your mind off of it because we have something else that we have to put our thoughts towards,” Danner said. “But it is – it’s not upsetting, we’ve had four great years – but it kind of sucks coming to the end … it’s a weird feeling.”
Though Wright’s trip to Perth in 2012 was perhaps the cornerstone to cultivating the players from that year’s Youth National Team, the seeds were sown long before, and he knows they’ll continue to grow long after as well.
“Our relationships are going to go long past the pool,” Wright said. “It’s a tough one, it’s an emotional one that I don’t want to wrap my head around, but we have so much still to do.”