Water Pistols : Willick, Cheen Provide Firepower for Harvard Water Polo Team

The Harvard High water polo team went into seclusion like a prizefighter would--and for all the same reasons. It went underground with a record of 22-3. It came out 2 weeks later a little leaner, perhaps a tad hungrier.

While everyone else was busy tending to such details as league championships, the free-lance Saracens did not play for nearly 2 weeks before the Southern Section 2-A Division playoffs began Nov. 10. Instead, they trained.

“Over the past two weeks of training it’s like coaching a bomb,” Harvard Coach Rich Corso said before the playoffs started. “The fuse has been lit and it’s ready to go off.”

Sure enough, Harvard detonated, and its 55-10 combined margin of victory after 3 rounds tends to support the bomb theory. The Saracens beat one team, 37-1. That’s not a water polo score: it’s the odds on Dan Quayle getting off the golf course in time to catch his boss’s inauguration.

“We disappeared out of the scene,” senior Damon Willick said. “We practiced hard. Now we are reaping the benefits of those practices.”

The Saracens, led by Willick and Justin Cheen, among others, would like to make the scene--Long Beach’s Belmont Plaza, site of the 2-A title match--again. Last season, they lost in the division final.

“Last year,” Cheen said, “we thought we were pretty hot. But last year’s team wasn’t as good as this one. This year, we have to go on. We didn’t work this hard for nothing.”

Willick concurred.

“It is a failure if we don’t win,” he said. “We didn’t train this hard for a silver medal.”

Willick and Cheen have been good as gold for Corso and his program the past 3 seasons. Both were sophomores when Corso arrived and, along with Crespi’s Tom Woiwode, have developed into the Valley-area’s foremost Division I prospects--although via somewhat different paths.

Willick, a 6-foot, 160-pound perimeter shooter with a shock of near-shoulder-length, rust-colored hair, has said that he would like to play for UCLA--like his basketball-playing buddy, Mitchell Butler of Oakwood High--or at UC Santa Barbara. He is a finesse player who twice has been honorable mention All-Southern Section.

Willick’s somewhat passive game has worked in high school, but he thinks it will have to change in college where the players are stronger and more aggressive.

“I like a fast-break type of game with a lot of open water out there,” he said. “It’s not like that as much in college.”

Corso, an assistant at UCLA for 10 years, has said as much.

“I’ve talked to him and said, ‘Hey, you’ve got to show the water polo community who the hell Damon Willick is,’ ” he said.

And while Willick is learning aggression, Cheen is moving in the other direction. Endearingly, Corso calls him “a bit of a guttersnipe.”

“When the game is going nice, I tend toward the finesse side,” Cheen said. “A great cross-court pass that leads to a goal, I think, is one of the beauties of the game. But there are times when I feel like I have to be aggressive. I want to make something happen.”

He looks stockier than his listed 6-foot, 150 pounds and plays much stouter than that.

Cheen scored 11 goals in Harvard’s opening-round win, 2 in the second and 3 more in the third. Corso does not keep statistics but offers this morsel: For the past 2 seasons, Cheen has played every minute of every match. In that span, Harvard is 50-9.

Cheen, who would like to attend UCLA, Cal or Stanford, has a glare that takes no prisoners. He directs it toward referees, opponents, even teammates. It’s all part of the street-wise way in which he carries himself.

Cheen’s personality complements his quickness and a physical brand of play. That combination earned him berths on the 17-and-under national youth team that traveled to Montreal in the summer and the All-Southern Section second team as a junior. Not surprisingly, he was the only Valley-area player to make the youth team.

Regardless of what transpires in the semifinals against South Pasadena at 3:15 p.m. Friday, or beyond, the duo has left an indelible mark at Harvard and in the Valley, where Division I players are as plentiful as robust Medflies.

“I think they’re a good reflection of our program,” Corso said. “They are intense, are real winners and approach the sport with an academic discipline.

“I think it’s the best I have to offer to the schools they’re applying to.”