UCLA’s Water Polo Program Is Given Reprieve : Funding: Boosters, alumni raise $100,000 to finance a five-year extension. The sport was scheduled to be discontinued June 30.

UCLA’s water polo program, scheduled to be discontinued June 30, has been reinstated, and a coach is expected to be hired this week, associate athletic director James Milhorn said Monday.

The program, granted a five-year reprieve, will be funded from a $100,000 endowment raised by UCLA alumni and water polo boosters. The Bruins also have two full scholarships endowed from another fund.

The school will not spend any money on the program, Milhorn said. If after five years the boosters do not have a permanent endowment of $3 million, the program could be eliminated, he said.

Water polo and men’s and women’s crew were discontinued earlier this year in an effort to reduce a $3-million athletic department deficit.

Crew supporters were unable to raise enough money for the program, so it will have onlyclub status in the next academic year.

“This gives us time to develop a five-year strategy to raise money (for the water polo program),” said James Puffer, a former Bruin water polo player who is a professor in the UCLA school of medicine.

Although the decision was welcomed by the aquatics community, it was never announced by UCLA officials.

Milhorn said he does not know why, even though water polo is under his supervision.

Perhaps part of the reason is that the team will operate without frills. With a yearly budget of $25,000, the team will make only one trip each season--to play Stanford and California--and the players will not be reimbursed for transportation to other matches.

“It’s very much a skeleton kind of budget,” Milhorn said.

“It’s back, but not back at a level that we would all like to have it back. We’re going to run it as any other NCAA sport. We just don’t have a lot of money to fund it.”

That could make it difficult to hire a quality coach. Last week, Rich Corso, a former Bruin assistant, refused the $15,000-a-year part-time job because he could not afford the move. Corso coaches at Harvard Westlake School in North Hollywood.

“I don’t know how sincere they are in wanting the program to be successful,” said John Vargas, a candidate for the job along with Guy Baker and Bruin assistant Jovan Vovic of Yugoslavia.

Vargas has coached Corona Del Mar High to four Southern Section championships in eight years, and although he wants to break into the college ranks, he said the UCLA job would be difficult.

The Bruins, who finished third nationally last season, lost one of their best players, Brandon Howald, who transferred to Cal.

Howald, Southern Section player of the year in 1989 when he attended Corona Del Mar, said he wanted to leave Southern California and concentrate on his education.

For those staying, however, UCLA will be at a disadvantage next fall. Howald said the team had nowhere to train this spring and it will not play together this summer. Four players--Scott Turner, Chris Kellerman, Marc Heenan and Todd Duplanty--returned home to Hawaii instead of playing in California summer leagues.

“They couldn’t wait around for UCLA to get its act together,” Howald said.