Check out a breakdown of the UCLA sports stories you might have missed this week.
Men’s water polo
Michael Hull, assistant Sports editor
Last week, rosters for the 2017 USA Water Polo National League were announced.
Twenty-two past, present and future Bruins are split up among six of the eight teams bidding for the semiprofessional league’s championship title.
A large number of UCLA’s recruits for next year will be playing in front of rising redshirt sophomore goalie Alex Wolf on the USA Junior National Team. Wolf, who will be coached by men’s senior national team goalie Merrill Moses, is joined by UCLA signees Quentin Osborne of Huntington Beach High School and Felix Brozyna-Vilm of Harvard-Westlake School.
Other commits for UCLA’s 2017 class, Bailey Jarvis of Las Lomas High School and Chase Travisano of Damien High School, are on USA Collegiate.
Moses, in addition to coaching USA Junior, is also a goalie for the defending champions New York Athletic Club, which features a host of UCLA alumni. Chancellor Ramirez, who finished his Bruin career in the fall, joins Rio Olympian Josh Samuels, Griffin White and Christopher Wendt, who were all on NYAC last year.
NYAC also had two-time national champions Danny McClintick and Anthony Daboub in 2016, though both of them have moved to the new Los Angeles Athletic Club team. They join up with former teammates and recent graduates Ryder Roberts, Garrett Danner – both of whom are finalists for the Peter J. Cutino Award this year – and Alec Zwaneveld.
Many of the members on last year’s runner-up team, USA Blue, have regrouped on USA University. Rising redshirt seniors Alex Roelse and Max Irving regroup with 2016 national champions Luca Cupido and Nic Carniglia, who along with the rest of California upended UCLA 9-8 in double overtime in the NCAA semifinals, and are joined by rising UCLA junior Warren Snyder.
And lastly, Patrick Fellner, UCLA’s leading scorer in 2016, joins the fourth-most scoring Bruin of all-time, Paul Reynolds, on the Olympic Club.
Competition begins next weekend in San Ramon, California.
Gymnastics
Hanson Wang, assistant Sports editor
For the second consecutive week, freshman Madison Kocian is the Pac-12’s Freshman/Newcomer of the Week. She earned the honor after recording a 10 on the uneven bars Saturday against Stanford, the first perfect score of her collegiate career. Kocian also won the all-around for the fourth time this season with a 39.575 – she now averages 39.350 in the all-around.
Redshirt senior Christine Peng-Peng Lee also won the Pac-12’s Specialist of the Week honor. Lee hit UCLA’s second perfect 10 of the year on the uneven bars in the Stanford meet, and raised her average on the event to 9.935, good for second-best in the country. She previously won Specialist of the Week after scoring 9.925 on uneven bars and 9.95 on balance beam against Oklahoma in January.