Bruin Imports Are Playing an Important Role : Water polo: UCLA is ranked No. 2 with a 16-1 record, thanks in part to two German players.

Stefan Pollmann and Oliver Will, who come from what used to be known as West Berlin, are celebrating the unification of Germany in a unique fashion.

They have combined their talents to lead the second-ranked UCLA water polo team to its best start in years. Coach Bob Horn’s Bruins are 16-1, and not since Horn’s 1972 NCAA championship team finished 19-1 has UCLA looked so strong.

Pollmann has scored a team-high 65 goals and could break Alexis Rousseau’s single-season school record of 81 goals. The 6-foot-1, 180-pound junior also has 24 steals and 21 assists and a shooting accuracy of 60.2%.

Will, a 6-1, 170-pound junior, leads the team with 59 assists and also has 38 steals and 33 goals.

Pollmann and Will played together on the German junior national team and also with Spandau, a top club team that has won five West German championships.

That they wound up playing for UCLA is a little surprising.

Pollmann, 23, first competed in the United States at Fresno State, where he broke that school’s single-season scoring record with 87 goals and was a third-team All-American. But after two years, he grew tired of the rural atmosphere of Fresno and was thinking about returning to Germany.

Pollmann first met Rousseau and another former UCLA player, Mark Maretzki, when he played against them in the 1985 junior world championships in Turkey. But he said that playing against Maretzki and Rousseau in college convinced him that it might be in his best interest to talk to Horn about transferring.

Will, 22, who spent his early years of higher education at the Technical Institute of Berlin, said he got to know Horn and the Bruin players when UCLA spent a summer training in Holland and Germany. When he heard that Pollmann would be playing for UCLA this year, Will decided to try and join him.

“I don’t actively pursue foreign athletes,” said Horn, who has six other foreign athletes on the team. He also makes sure that the foreign players know that “they have got to prove themselves.”

Horn said that Pollmann and Will “are very serious and motivated. They are mature for their ages. There was no question that Stefan Pollmann would be our captain this year. He is a very, very good leader.”

Horn said Pollmann was recently asked by an interviewer how many goals he would like to have scored by the end of the season.

“Just enough to win the NCAAs,” Pollmann said.

Pollmann also showed he was adept at word play in English when he was asked why he first chose Fresno State over UCLA. “I was testing the waters,” he said.

Will said he was not surprised that his fellow Bruins are good players. He also enjoys socializing with them away from the pool.

Will said when he played with the Spandau club, he was used to having teammates who were older. Some of them were married and went home to their families after matches or practice. The camaraderie at lunches and dinners with UCLA teammates “has been really great,” he said.

Horn said that interest among foreign athletes in attending U.S. colleges and competing for college teams has increased greatly since the move toward democracy in nations that used to be known as Soviet satellites.

Horn also said it is not true that foreign players are usurping places on his team that otherwise might have been occupied by American players. He said the foreigners give the Bruins the depth to overcome injuries, with injuries a big reason why UCLA finished 14-12 last year.

UCLA junior Ken Little of Irvine and freshman Ivan Asic, a Yugoslavian immigrant who played at Long Beach Millikan High, have shoulder injuries that have kept them out of action this year. UCLA water polo is not only benefiting from an influx of foreign players, but it has also received a boost from first-year assistant coach Jovan Vavic (pronounced VAH-vich). A former top player in Yugoslavia, Vavic, 29, coached at Palos Verdes High for three years before he came to UCLA.

Horn said that it was Vavic’s “dream to come to California and somehow be affiliated with UCLA.” Horn, who is in his 28th year as UCLA’s coach, said Vavic has helped him to take a fresh look at coaching. Vavic’s approach to coaching “reinforces everything I believe in,” Horn said, adding that they are so close in their thinking that “we almost say the same thing at the same time.”

Horn said before the season that he did not think “anyone has as much talent as we do.”

Horn thinks the Bruins are capable of winning the national championship. “If we continue to make progress and get to the NCAAs without too many roadblocks, we should have a very good chance,” he said.