U.S. Water Polo Team Wins Its First : After Weeks of Scrimmaging, It Beats Spain in a Game

In its first game of 1988, its first competition of the Olympic year, the United States water polo team defeated Spain, 8-6, at Belmont Plaza in Long Beach. It was the first in a series of games against visiting countries also gearing up for the Olympic Games.

U.S. Coach Bill Barnett said after the game Friday night that he had just learned that the Cuban national team would be in Southern California from Jan. 22 until Feb. 4 and would be scheduling some practice games with his team.

Teams from Japan and Italy also will be visiting.

The game against Spain drew a surprisingly large crowd, estimated at 1,100. The start of the game Friday night had to be held up for 20 minutes because of the line of fans waiting to get in.

U.S. team captain Terry Schroeder scored three goals in leading the Americans to a victory over a team it has been training with for the last couple of weeks.

Barnett said that his team was about where he had expected it to be at this point in the year--not in peak condition and not real intense after its layoff since the Pan Am Games last August, but not too bad, either.

The American team has been working together for the last couple of weeks. “We haven’t really had a chance to practice our system and work on the things I’d like to work on because we’ve spent so much time scrimmaging with Spain,” Barnett said. “This game was good for us tonight because it showed the coaches what we need to work on . . .

“Our defense wasn’t bad, especially with Craig (Wilson) in the cage. But offensively I thought we were very, very poor. There just wasn’t a lot of intensity.”

Wilson made 12 saves. Spain’s goalie, Jesus Rollan, made 9.

Four of Spain’s six goals were scored by team captain Jorge Neira, but he didn’t start scoring until after the U.S. had taken a 4-0 lead and his teammate, Salvador Gomez, had put Spain on the scoreboard with a power-play goal to make it 4-1. Neira scored with 47 seconds left in the second period and then opened the scoring in the third period with a goal that made it a 4-3 game.

It was then that Schroeder scored his second goal, taking a perfect pass from Jody Campbell, a teammate on the ’84 Olympic team, that sailed across the pool to find Schroeder waiting, open, off to the left.

Kevin Robertson scored two goals for the U.S., both in the fourth period. And Craig Klass, Doug Kimbell and Jody Campbell also scored.

Schroeder, who injured his back in a car accident last summer before the Pan Am Games, said that he is “95% recovered” from those injuries.

The U.S. coaches chose to play all 16 players available Friday night, in keeping with the idea of a training game.