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Decision to Drop Water Polo Has Wide Impact : UCLA: Other top programs fear that sport will lose status as NCAA championship event.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

The announcement last week that UCLA’s water polo program was one of three sports being eliminated because of budget restrictions sent shock waves through the aquatics community.

And not only among former Bruin players and fans. Some of UCLA’s main rivals--coaches from Stanford, Cal and USC--are equally concerned about the fate of the Bruins’ program.

That is because the demise of UCLA water polo could eventually result in the sport’s loss of sanctioning by the NCAA.

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“If UCLA was the dynamic leader of water polo in the 1960s and ‘70s, then it’s the one that will destroy the games in the ‘90s,” said Bob Horn, the Bruin coach who retired last season after 28 years.

Representatives from the country’s best collegiate water polo teams are meeting in Irvine today to help UCLA supporters plan a strategy that could lead to reinstatement.

Water polo is one of those geographically concentrated sports that has long struggled to stay above the NCAA’s minimum of 50 schools for championship sponsorship. There are 53 Division I programs.

“A university of UCLA’s stature in water polo can have a tremendous ripple effect by dropping it,” said Monte Nitzkowski, the former U.S. Olympic coach.

Nitzkowski, of Huntington Beach, played at UCLA in the early 1950s, and remains active in USA Water Polo, the sport’s national governing body. He said UCLA probably will be given a grant by the national organization to help keep the program afloat.

Allan Cutro, another former player, said alumni met this week and hope to raise a $2-million endowment to persuade UCLA administrators not to terminate the sport.

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Stephen Salm, UCLA’s athletic business manager, said any decision to reinstate the program would come from Chancellor Charles Young and Athletic Director Peter Dalis.

Water polo and men’s and women’s crew will be eliminated, effective June 30, because of a $3-million budget deficit, according to UCLA officials. Dalis said in a statement that the deficit is projected to increase to $11 million by 1995. He said emergency stop-gap measures were needed.

The water polo program cost the school about $100,000 annually, Horn said. The budget for men’s crew is about $166,000 and for women’s crew about $50,000.

“We’re willing to fund the program at about 50% to 75%, but we don’t believe we should have to fund the whole thing,” Cutro said. “That wouldn’t be fair, considering other sports don’t operate that way.”

UCLA, which finished third in the country last season, has been a perennial power. Six of the 11 players on the 1968 U.S. Olympic team were Bruins, and five of seven starters on the 1972 bronze medal-winning team were UCLA players.

The current team would lose only one senior starter from last season, and has two outstanding redshirt freshmen in Brandon Howald from Corona del Mar High and Scott Turner from Honolulu.

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Times staff writer Chris Dufresne contributed to this story.

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