Going Out With a Splash : Wilson Will Play His Final Olympics as Standout Goalie on Water Polo Team

The portable telephone in Craig and Maria Wilson’s Newport Beach apartment is ringing intermittently, which, it becomes increasingly apparent, is normal.

The first caller is inquiring about tickets to next week’s Olympics in Barcelona. Wilson, the U.S. Olympic water polo goalie, says arrangements have been made. A contact in Barcelona, where he played professionally last year, has taken care of it.

The next caller needs a favor, and Wilson considers whether he will have time before leaving for Barcelona to oblige.

At a time when most three-time Olympians think about joining the work force, Wilson, 35, is returning to the pool to play in Europe. His days with the U.S. national team will end in Barcelona, but after all this time, he remains an exceptional goalie.

So why stop?

Wilson, 6 feet 5, 190 pounds, gangly arms and legs, broad chest, bright smile, is too good to let go.

“I still enjoy it,” he says.

The phone interrupts his thought. The caller is a teammate who needs a ride to the airport. Although the players have been home from Europe for only four days, they must fly to Tampa, Fla., for Olympic processing.

Wilson asks Maria if she will take the teammate to the airport when she takes him. She groans, but agrees.

“Sometimes I feel like a chauffeur for the U.S. water polo team,” she says.

Sometimes, she is.

SO, THAT’S HOW THEY MET

Barcelona should be exciting for the Wilsons. After living there last year, they speak Spanish and have many friends in the city.

But in the busy days before departure, it is difficult to relax. Maria has left a waitressing job at a Corona del Mar restaurant. They are leaving their apartment without knowing where they will live after the Games. They are fairly certain they will be in Europe because of some lucrative offers, but. . . .

“You get lonely there,” Maria said.

At least this time, they know what to expect.

They started dividing time between the States and Europe in 1988. They left the Seoul Games and went to Italy, without speaking Italian. They lived in Siracusa, Sicily, without a telephone for the first year. Maria was so lonely she adopted a stray dog, Pee Wee, now her constant companion.

“It makes you appreciate your family and friends,” Wilson said of living abroad.

Eventually, however, the Wilsons learned Italian, made friends, and kept going back. They even got used to bombings, the Sicilian Mafia’s method of extorting money from shopkeepers. Their favorite bakery was hit twice.

But the Wilsons weren’t as concerned about bombings as the driving.

“There is no such thing as street lights or lanes,” Wilson said. “You just go where you can.”

Said Maria: “When we left, I said, ‘Thank God!’ I really thought we were going to die on the streets there.”

Maria might have guessed what she was getting into, considering the way she met Wilson eight years ago. She was a UCLA student living in Malibu in 1983 when she was introduced to some Soviet water polo players who were competing in a pre-Olympic tournament at Pepperdine.

She became friends with one player, Erikin Shagaev. When the Soviet Union later announced its boycott of the 1984 Summer Games, Shagaev realized he would be unable to see his American friend in 1984.

But at a 1984 tournament in Budapest, Hungary, Shagaev and teammates were sharing vodka and good cheer with the effervescent Wilson, the ambassador of American water polo. Late in the evening, Shagaev handed Wilson a present to give to Maria.

When Wilson returned to Southern California, he called and told her of the situation. They finally met in October, after the Olympics. He delivered the present and they went their separate ways. A few hours later, though, Maria called Wilson, they had lunch and they married two years later, shortly before the Goodwill Games in Moscow.

Wilson saw Shagaev in the stands at the Goodwill Games, and told him what had happened.

Shagaev stood, smiled and shook Wilson’s hand.

BECAUSE HE WAS THERE

It has been 11 years and the seamless road has melded the countries and experiences together into a travelogue.

In 1981, Wilson’s first year with the U.S. team, he visited China. The players, touring a decade after Ping-Pong diplomacy, were having lunch one day when they were approached by a Chinese official who wondered whether the team was returning to its hotel in another city.

It was.

He wondered if a tourist in his group could accompany them. The tourist, staying at the same hotel, had a toothache and could not eat.

That is how Wilson and other U.S. players met Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa guide who helped Sir Edmund Hillary conquer Mt. Everest.

“He was one of the funniest men I’ve ever met,” Wilson said.

Norgay told tales of the Himalayas as they rode to their hotel. Someone asked Norgay who had reached Everest’s summit first, a question the Sherpa tactfully skirted in his book about the famous ascent.

“He said he was first,” Wilson said.

Wilson never saw Norgay again, but the meeting had a profound effect. The world, he discovered, was packed with surprises.

Such as the hot summer night in Yugoslavia in 1983. Most of the U.S. water polo players had gone to sleep after a match, but were awakened late in the night by a racket in the bar of their hotel. Wilson and some others investigated.

There, they found teammates Jody Campbell and Jamie Bergeson leading the local patrons in the Yugoslav national anthem.

“They were standing on the tables, swinging their beer mugs,” Wilson recalled. “Of course, they didn’t know the song.”

Of course.

DID YOU SEE THAT?

Nine years ago, Bob Horn was standing on top of a building at Pepperdine, watching the U.S. national team play West Germany in a pre-Olympic water polo tournament.

From Horn’s vantage point, he could clearly see the plays unfold, and what he saw that day he will not soon forget.

Horn, then UCLA’s coach, watched with mild interest as two Germans swam unopposed toward the U.S. net, where Wilson was the last line of defense. It was a text-book fast break, and the Germans knew what to do. Each swam to one side of the goal, trying to force Wilson to commit himself.

Horn had seen the play hundreds of times--as an Olympic goalie in 1956 and 1960 and on the pool deck for collegiate games. The German with the ball would block Wilson and pass to his teammate for an open shot.

And their execution was perfect. The player with the ball blocked Wilson and threw the cross-pool pass. But where was Wilson? He was no longer guarding the first German. He had quickly moved away and intercepted the pass.

“The Germans looked as if they couldn’t believe it had happened,” Horn said.

Horn was not entirely sure himself.

But such remarkable plays have become the trademark of U.S. water polo with Wilson in the goal. In the Alamo Cup last month at Corona del Mar High, Wilson blocked a penalty shot, helping the United States defeat Italy by two goals.

And last April in the France International Tournament, Wilson even scored a goal. His father, Lowell, wonders about that.

“One of his teammates had to tip it in,” Lowell Wilson said.

Wilson has been amazing fans and foes so often that he is widely considered the world’s best goalie. He has led the United States to two Olympic silver medals and was the tournament’s leading goal saver each time.

Now, as the Olympics’ oldest water polo player, Wilson hopes to help the United States win its first water polo gold medal since the 1904 Games in St. Louis--when it was the only nation competing.

The folks back in Davis, Calif., would have never guessed.

“We’re in the boonies as far as the leading edge of water polo,” Lowell Wilson said.

BACK HOME IN BOONTOWN

Wilson was a successful age-group swimmer in Davis. All he recalls is that his mother, Betty, put him in a car, and he joined the local team, the Davis Aquadarts. He enjoyed minor successes, but did not take swimming serious.

“It bored him,” Lowell said.

But when the Davis Recreation Department formed a junior water polo team, Wilson joined.

“I like having a referee, a whistle, a ball,” he said.

Particularly, a ball. Wilson was a strong left-handed pitcher in youth baseball leagues.

His strong swimming and pitching arm made Wilson a primary candidate to become a field player. But he volunteered for the goal.

“I didn’t want to swim up and down the pool,” he said. “I hated it.”

No one could have predicted, when he was 13, that he would grow to 6-5 with an arm span the size of jet wings. But as he grew, it was clear that he made the right choice.

Wilson was Davis High’s second prep All-American. The first had been another water polo player, better known today as triathlete Dave Scott.

Still, Wilson was not recruited as a high school athlete. So after graduation, he went to UC Davis. It was convenient, but not much more. His grades were poor and he was restless. He needed to get out of town.

After visiting a friend in Santa Barbara, Wilson decided to attend Santa Barbara City College for two years, then transfer to a university. He figured the Southern California water polo scene would improve his game.

After enrolling, he visited the athletic department to announce his arrival. He was told that the junior college no longer had a team.

“I wasn’t too disappointed,” he said.

After not having played for two years, Wilson transferred to UC Santa Barbara, where he majored in political science and joined the water polo team as a walk-on. He started as the No. 5 goalie, but was the starter by the first game. And in 1979, his senior season, Wilson helped the Gauchos win a national championship.

Wilson then joined the national team, and by 1984 was competing against three other outstanding goalies--Steve Hammond, John Gansel and Chris Dorst--for a starting spot on the Olympic team.

The stable was so strong, Coach Monte Nitzkowski said, that any of the goalies could have played for another nation.

All the competition helped Wilson improve, but perhaps the most important influence was a rules change. Responding to the need to quicken the game, international water polo officials allowed goalies to throw the ball past half court.

That freed Wilson, the one-time Little League left-hander, to join the offense. The goalie could initiate counterattacks, the aquatic equivalent of a fast break.

“Wilson is the best passing goalie this game has ever seen,” said Horn, the former Olympic goalie from Manhattan Beach.

Now, after so many years in the pool, and having had so many international coaches, Wilson has molded a complete game.

“I’m a lot smarter now,” he said. “For a goalie, 80% of the battle is knowing the competition. After playing against them for eight years, (I) know their sleeping patterns.”

They know his as well. But that does not mean they have figured out how to score against him. When Wilson is on, he said, the hard, yellow ball, thrown at break-neck speeds, turns into a slow, puffy, beach ball.

All the easier to block.