Sacrifices in Search for Gold : Schroeder Puts Life on Hold to Join U.S. Water Polo Team’s Quest

It is just another lazy day in paradise: the manicured lawns, the crystal clear pool and a view, as far as the eye can see, of the Pacific Ocean.

On the surface, Terry Schroeder fits the setting. He has the blond hair, the tan, the swim suit.

But Schroeder does not have much time for this peaceful place, the Pepperdine campus in Malibu. He is better suited for the floor of the New York Stock Exchange with his shirttail hanging out, sweating out the figures on an electronic board.

Schroeder’s life is that frantic, a constant juggling act between his chiropractic practice in Westlake Village, his responsibilities as Pepperdine’s water polo coach and his private life in Agoura with his wife, Lori.

Schroeder cannot buy 10 minutes of peace and quiet, yet he took an already unnerving schedule and pushed it over the edge last September.

He signed up for another hitch with the U.S. Olympic water polo team.

U.S. Olympic Coach Bill Barnett jump-started this merry-go-round last summer with a simple question: “What would it take to get you back on the team?”

Schroeder, 32, mulled it over and replied: a schedule that would allow him to miss some weekday practices.

The decision had to be made almost two years before the 1992 Olympic Games because the U.S. team needed a top-six finish at the world championships last January in Perth, Australia, to qualify for the Olympics.

“For me, the world championships were a trial to see what level I could play on and if I could still have fun and get along with the guys,” Schroeder said.

A fourth-place finish behind Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Spain convinced him that another 18 months of training would be worth it.

The next step was convincing his wife.

“She was a big part of the decision,” Schroeder said. “We won’t have time together on weekends and we won’t have vacations, but I do have to take some time to fulfill our need to be together because obviously the most important thing is keeping my wife happy.”

Lori admittedly had mixed feelings about her husband’s return to the U.S. team.

“We had so many things going on in our lives already,” she said. “But it is something you really can’t hold anyone back from.”

Terry’s appearances at practices and tournaments make it tough on Lori, the wife, because she is burdened with the household responsibilities, but it is even more difficult on Lori, the chiropractor.

Last Thursday, for example, she saw 40 patients in a 5 1/2-hour span. Some of the patients were hers, others were Terry’s, and several belonged to another doctor in their practice who is ill.

Beginning in April, until the Games end in early August, Lori will take on a heavier load of Terry’s patients because he will be spending even more time training and traveling to preparatory competitions.

Even though he is excused from some practices in the meantime, Schroeder trains with the U.S. team Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Newport Beach and tries to make night practices Tuesday and Wednesday at Long Beach.

The drive alone, from 1 1/2 to three hours one way depending on traffic, eats up a chunk of his time.

When Schroeder is not with the U.S. team, he tries to make up for his absences by training with his Pepperdine team and working out in his garage where he has assembled a weight-training system.

“Coach Barnett and the team know that I’m doing the work during the week, that I won’t let them down,” Schroeder said. “I know what it takes to get in shape, but it is a team game and I am the team captain and it hurts me not to be there at practice. I know I’d have some doubts about a guy who wasn’t there all the time.”

He is not the exception. Goalie Craig Wilson misses a majority of practices because he is playing in the Italian pro league and one of the other three holdovers from the 1988 Olympic team misses practices because of family and business obligations.

Although Schroeder will become the first American to make four Olympic water polo teams, status was not a factor in his decision to return.

“That’s a neat honor but not a huge motivator,” Schroeder said. “To be part of the Olympics again in the first place is the major motivator. It is something I dreamed of as a kid when I was 7 or 8 watching on TV.

“It is a challenge to your inner self to be one of the best in the world in what you do. To go to the Olympics is the measure that you’ve done it. I felt I could still play and still contribute.

“Sure, some of it is the disappointment over not winning the gold after coming so close, but the Olympics is so positive that a silver medal is not a negative experience. It helps to motivate you, though, that the gold medal is still out there.”

A boycott in 1980 and the Yugoslav team in ’84 and ’88 have made the gold elusive.

In the ’84 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, the championship game between the U.S. and the Yugoslavs ended in a tie, but the Yugoslavs were awarded the gold medal because they scored more goals throughout the Games.

After a rule change requiring overtime for ties in the title game, the Americans and Yugoslavs went into double overtime in the ’88 Olympics in Seoul before Yugoslavia prevailed. “We are really similar to the Yugoslavs,” Schroeder said. “They rely on good team speed, outstanding shooting and their goalie.”

The U.S. showed its weakness in an area the Yugoslavs are strong--converting power plays into goals--just last Thursday in pool play at the FINA Cup in Barcelona. In a 5-4 loss to Yugoslavia, the Americans converted only two of 10 power plays.

The U.S. team came back strong in medal play, however, and beat the Yugoslav team, 7-6, to claim the gold medal Sunday.

“We have a number of guys without international experience so the more we play the better we do,” said Schroeder, who will return with the U.S. team to international competition Aug. 2-18 in the Pan American Games in Cuba.

Schroeder (6-foot-3, 205 pounds) is a key contributor because he is a highly skilled two-meter man, a role similar to the center position in basketball.

Like basketball, where players of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s caliber are rare, great two-meter men are difficult to find.

As the “hole man,” Schroeder is constantly fouled, as many as 75 to 100 times in a game. Because the head is the easiest part of the body to reach above water, Schroeder has had over 100 stitches to close cuts in his face.

He also has a scar on his right wrist, a reminder of the tooth a Soviet player embedded in it.

Schroeder credits his parents for teaching him to control his anger. His father, Robert, a chiropractor in Santa Barbara, showed him how to help people.

“I grew up at his office, seeing people go in who couldn’t walk and walk out with a smile on their faces,” Schroeder said. “I enjoy being there to help people. Turning pain into a smile is very uplifting.”

After his graduation from Pepperdine in 1981, Terry followed family tradition--59 members of the extended Schroeder family are chiropractors, including his brother, Lance, and his sister, Tammy--and attended chiropractic school.

It was there that he met Lori.

“When we first met he was so humble I had to hear about his accomplishments from someone else,” Lori said.

By the time they were married in 1987, she knew only too well the commitment required to reach such heights. Which is not to say that Lori hasn’t reaped some enjoyment from Terry’s involvement in water polo.

In 1988, she traveled to Seoul, watched Terry help the U.S. win a silver medal and appeared on television. “NBC showed the wives as much as they showed us,” Terry said. “They lived and died with us, they were a lot more nervous.”

They also make more of a sacrifice than their husbands, Terry believes.

“I’m out there having fun with the team and enjoying the camaraderie during the time that we would be together,” he said.

In the next six months, their extended time together might be limited to a weekend in San Diego that Lori has penciled in.

Fortunately, they both see the light at the end of the tunnel.

“I just have to stay focused with him one more year,” Lori said. “I think this team has a lot of potential and if he can get that gold medal, we should give it a try.”