To redshirt or not to redshirt, that it is the question.
It’s not exactly Shakespeare. It is not even, to hear UCLA men’s water polo coach Adam Krikorian tell it, a particularly complicated decision.
“My attitude’s never changed,” he said. “It’s always been as simple as “˜if you can help us win, I want you to play (right away).'”
The concept of redshirting might seem strange to anyone outside the world of college athletics. When taking a redshirt, an athlete sits out of competition for a season to retain a year of eligibility. It’s most often done when a player is a freshman or suffers a major injury.
For the men’s water polo team, it’s just often done, period. All but four of the players on the Bruins’ 27-man roster are past or present redshirts. One of those four is a walk-on.
Two of the remaining three are sophomore Kevin Kuga and freshman Ben Hohl. Kuga scored 14 goals as a true freshman last year and has 11 so far this year. Hohl has 13 this year, including three against Loyola Marymount in his first collegiate game.
For Kuga, Krikorian’s decision to play him in his first year came as something of a surprise.
“I just assumed I was going to (redshirt) because it’s pretty much UCLA’s policy to redshirt all of the freshmen,” he said. But when the opportunity to play was offered, it didn’t take him long to jump on it.
“I was a little nervous (at first),” he said. “I talked to my parents about what they thought. I talked to some guys on the team; I checked with the older guys, got their opinion on it. They all gave me a lot of support, and so I went in with confidence.”
Krikorian said that team need is one major consideration in deciding when to play a player as a true freshman. A player’s personal makeup and individual skills also factor in. Kuga, Krikorian said, was at the intersection of all of these factors last year.
“(Kuga has) great speed, he moves in the water well, and he’s a good defensive player. That was something that we needed last year,” Krikorian said. “He was also a guy that really responded well to competition in practice. … And a guy that responds well to competition is a guy that’s going to get tremendously better over the course of the year.”
But for the player, competing in the first year carries added pressure and expectations. In addition to wanting to do enough to justify the spent year of eligibility, there’s also the challenge of earning the respect of a team made up mostly of older players who had to wait a year before earning the right to play.
“There’s definitely a little bit of added pressure because everyone else has already proven themselves,” Hohl said.
“Being just a true freshman, I’ve only been here a month, (so I have to) actually prove to them that I can step up and do everything they can.”
But with the extensive support system of older players and coaches, true freshmen are seldom put in a position where they’re asked to do more than they can handle. And if a young player does stumble, there are plenty of people ready to hand out advice. Sometimes too many, according to Krikorian.
“There’s so much that (true freshmen) need to learn that you have to be very careful that it’s not information overload,” he said. “I think coaches can have the tendency to maybe throw too much at them and then they maybe put too much pressure on themselves, instead of just using the natural ability and the talent that helped them get to the point where they are now.
“With Ben particularly, everyone kind of wants to tell him what to do, and it’s tough for him when he hears it from me, from the assistants and from the players. It’s gotta come a little bit more from just me.”
Kuga admitted that he has been guilty of trying to give the benefit of his experience to Hohl.
“I did (give him advice) for a little while,” Kuga said. “He picked it up faster than I did. He’s an outstanding player.”
There are also academic considerations that enter into the redshirting decision. Sitting out a year puts athletes on a five-year plan, meaning their academic schedule is more spread out and less demanding. Kuga says he expected to stay at UCLA for five years when he entered as part of the engineering school but he has since switched his major to environmental science. He says he may still stay at UCLA for more than four years, possibly as a undergraduate assistant coach in the fall of his fifth year.
But even with all the considerations to be weighed, in the end neither Kuga nor Hohl have any regrets about not redshirting. Players, no matter what age, just want to play.
“I’m glad I didn’t redshirt,” Hohl said. “I don’t know if I could have gone a year without playing a game.”