U.S. Water Polo Team Will Face Spain Tonight

The United States water polo team will begin preparations for the 1988 Olympic Games at Seoul, South Korea, when it plays Spain tonight at Belmont Plaza pool in Long Beach. The team has not played together since beating Cuba for the Pan American Games gold medal last August.

Coach Bill Barnett said: “This session will be used as pure training. The game will be pretty intense, but these players are not physically prepared to play hard water polo at this point in their training in the Olympic year.”

Spain, one of seven teams that already has qualified for the Olympics, was fifth in the ’86 World Championships and sixth in the ’87 FINA World Cup.

The U.S. team has five players and the alternate back from its ’84 Olympic team that won the silver medal. Returning along with the captain, Terry Schroeder, are goalie Craig Wilson, Jody and Peter Campbell, and Kevin Robertson. James Bergeson was the alternate in ’84.

Doug Burke, 30, a member of two U.S. teams, has retired so he can devote more time to his business, distributing whole grain breads and muffins.

The team from Spain arrived in the United States Dec. 23 and has been working out at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Boulder, Colo.

The U.S. team will be training and scrimmaging against Japan in March in Southern California before making a trip to the East Coast for a series of games against Italy. The U.S. also will play in the Cubano Invitational in early April.

The final competitions before the Olympic Games will be the Eight Nation Invitational in West Germany and the Yassa Invitational in Yugoslavia, both in August.