Bruin Has Philosophy All His Own About Playing Water Polo

The French philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau, believed that man was naturally good and was corrupted by artificial societies. UCLA water polo Coach Bob Horn feels much the same way about coaching third-year sophomore Alexis Rousseau.

Horn said that the young water polo player, “is so darn fresh . . . really unspoiled,” that he tries to keep his coaching to a minimum so as not to ruin Rousseau’s creative approach to the game.

He said that although Rousseau (no relation to the 18th-Century philosopher) has much to learn about water polo, he is a natural--in much the same way that Magic Johnson or Larry Bird are in basketball.

“He has the kind of mind that adapts readily to team-sport situations. He has street sense and good instincts.”

Horn said that he began to realize that coaching Rousseau was not entirely necessary when UCLA’s AAU summer team was playing the U. S. national team. He said he tried to give Rousseau technical advice on playing against such world-class players as Drew McDonald and Gary Figueroa. But he gave up on it when Rousseau asked, “Who are they?”

The UCLA coach said he finally told Rousseau just to “forget the scientific play and use your instincts. He did, and his play was delightful.”

What pleases Horn most is Rousseau’s ability to score. In his first college season last year, the Santa Monica High School graduate scored 60 goals to lead the Bruins and was named a second-team All-American as UCLA finished third in the NCAA Tournament.

The 6-3, 190-pounder is a two-meter, or hole, man, comparable to a center in basketball, and his chief responsibility is to pass off to teammates so that they can make goals. And he does get plenty of assists when his teammates score.

He scores more than hole men usually do. Horn said he was not surprised at Rousseau’s scoring, that his two-meter man is a big, rangy left-hander and that portsiders have a scoring edge.

But he did not expect Rousseau to top the Bruins in scoring and still have a lot of assists. “That he does both is tremendous. He also gets a lot of goals on power plays (when an opponent must play short-handed because of a penalty).”

At 19, Rousseau is a member of the U. S. junior national team and hopes to make the senior national team for the 1992 Olympics. Junior team Coach Rich Corso considers Rousseau one of the top three juniors in the world, according to an article in the water polo magazine Scoreboard U.S.A.

Horn, in his 25th year as UCLA’s coach, said that, if Rousseau “continues to progress, he’ll make the natural transition from the juniors to the national B team. If he continues, he has a chance to make the Olympic team. I’m confident he’ll get that opportunity if he doesn’t lose his hunger for the game and continues with his enthusiasm.” But Rousseau’s ascent to the heights in water polo has not been a natural progression.

He was born in Paris of parents who were French citizens and had left Algeria before the revolution ousted the French from their former colony. When he was 3 his parents emigrated to Montreal where Alexis learned to swim and play hockey. After a later move to Vermont, he took up skiing.

When he was 11 the Rousseaus settled in Santa Monica. At Santa Monica High, Alexis’ older brother Jean, now 22 and a UCLA graduate, played water polo.

But when Alexis got to high school he was considering going out for the football team. He said that Jean, however, talked him into water polo, telling him that his experience as an age-group swimmer in Canada would help him in the water sport.

“My dad also was not too keen about football because of the injury factor,” he said in an interview before a recent practice.

Alexis soon found that he was keenly interested in water polo. But his emerging prowess was not enough to stimulate much interest among college coaches, who tend to look for California prospects up north or at Orange County powers such as Newport Harbor High or Corona del Mar.

UCLA and USC were the only schools that recruited him, and Horn found out about him only through a friend whose daughter was dating Rousseau.

Horn said he took the youth to a UCLA basketball game and was going to introduce him to John Wooden, the former basketball coach who led the Bruins to 10 NCAA championships. “But he didn’t know who John Wooden was.

“He was so darn fresh and so darn new to this country that nobody really recruited him. He was unspoiled and unique, and I decided then that I wanted this guy.”

After his sensational freshman year, when he averaged about two goals a match, Rousseau is a wanted man--wanted and keyed on by defenders.

“I think I was marked by other teams a little bit last year because I had played on the junior national team,” he said.

“But this year I definitely expect more competition and for defenders to key on me more. But that gives me more drive, makes me work harder.”

He was hard at work last weekend at the UC Irvine Tournament. Fifth-ranked UCLA split six matches in the tournament and its overall record dropped to 7-4. At Irvine, the Bruins lost to to Stanford, Cal State Long Beach and USC and finished sixth in the field.

But UCLA might not have done that well if it were not for Rousseau, who missed the team’s first five games along with teammate Mark Maretski. The Bruin pair were playing with the junior national squad in a tournament in Brazil.

In the Irvine tournament, Rousseau demonstrated that he had not lost his scoring touch. He led all scorers with 22 goals, averaging nearly four a match, and had a high of 7 in a 13-5 defeat of Fresno State.

He said that last year and this season he “wasn’t aiming to score as many goals as I could, but I definitely like to score. But sometimes I try to shoot too much.

“Yet, I have been playing better team defense because I realize it’s more important. I need a little bit more experience (in realizing such things as) when to go for a shot or when to work the shot clock down.

“I feel I could get a little more dominating by getting bigger. I lifted weights a lot in the off-season, and I think that has helped a lot. I’ve had no problems with injuries, no sore shoulders.”

Rousseau said that he and his teammates hope to bring Coach Horn another NCAA championship. Horn’s teams have won three NCAA titles, but the last was in 1972. Before 1969, when the NCAA recognized water polo as an official sport, Horn had four teams that had undefeated seasons.

But it has been a long dry spell, and Horn said it might not have been so long if had not stopped coaching UCLA for seven years in summer play. He said he spent that time coaching in a camp in Utah. He brought his two sons to the camp during those summers because he wanted to keep an eye on them and watch them grow up.

Because of that hiatus, he said, “we lost a lot of momentum. Prior to that we had a real stranglehold on the national title.”

Is it time for the Bruins to come out of hibernation? “It takes a while to get back into the swing of things, but we’re closing in on it,” Horn said. “We have a delightful young team that is very talented, and I think it has an outside chance of winning it (the NCAA title).

Rousseau thinks so too. “It could be this year; it could be next year. It’s a matter of putting three strong games together in the national tournament, and it’s anyone’s ball game.”

Beyond UCLA, Rousseau is aiming for a spot on the U.S. national team in the 1992 Olympics. “1992 is definitely in line for me; I doubt that I could make it in ’88. I’ll hang in there and see what happens.

“Sometimes I get physically tired, but I’m always competitive. I love the challenge, and I haven’t even gotten close to being bored with water polo. I think I can manage till ’92.”

Spoken like a natural man. Now if he can only keep his coaches from messing up his game.