The No. 3 UCLA men’s water polo team has heard the old adage “practice makes perfect” and taken it to heart.
The team practices year-round, twice a day during the regular season. Like most of UCLA’s athletic programs, the team combines pool workouts, weight training and game-footage sessions into a practice program that has made the Bruins one of the top teams in the NCAA.
“Practice is always important,” coach Adam Krikorian said. “It’s where everything happens. We don’t just show up at games. For any competitive practice you need players and coaches to be at their best. Whether it is at the beginning of the season or the end of the season, the mind-set never changes.”
In the pool the Bruins practice fundamental skills, such as shooting and swimming, run new plays, and work on drills.
Lately, with the end of the regular season looming, Krikorian and his staff continue to stress the need for excellent practices.
“There’s a little bit more fine-tuning toward the end of the season,” Krikorian said. “Sure, we always touch on fundamentals, but there is a little less of that later in the season. Now it’s about working on more precise details about certain things. It’s important everyone keeps their attention for every single minute of practice.”
The players recognize the need for practice.
“Practice is always important. It doesn’t matter if it is preseason or off-season, practice is always important,” senior center Marco Santos said. “And right now it is extremely important because we’re at the point where we will peak again before tapering.”
Outside of the pool, the athletes give their bodies a rest and focus on the upcoming game mentally, watching game footage in the J.D. Morgan Center, sometimes for hours.
“Outside of the pool, we’ll watch some video,” Krikorian said. “We’ll watch some things, maybe get a feel for other teams and what they like to do and what some of their tendencies are, how some of their players play.
“We also study ourselves too. We’ll watch ourselves in games that we’ve played, things we have done wrong, then go back to practice and try to correct those things, as well as see the things we did well and take some confidence from that. Video is an important part of our sport and probably athletics on a whole nowadays.”
There are many elements that go into the preparation for a game, and most of them happen on the pool deck or while watching video, but, when it comes down to it, the players also take a facet of preparation for games into their own hands. Krikorian is confident that his team knows what he expects them to do in order to practice at a high level.
“We want to put it all together,” Krikorian said. “These guys understand how we want to play all facets of the game and now it’s just doing it on a consistent basis and hopefully that carries over to the games. … But ultimately, practice makes perfect.”