Fourth-Place Finish May Leave Barnett High, Dry

The United States owns precisely one Olympic gold medal in water polo and it won that one in 1904, when the tournament was rigged.

That year, the United States was the only country to participate in water polo, and it entered several teams, so even when the Americans lost, they won.

Barcelona was going to deliver the first legitimate gold medal. Bill Barnett’s U.S. squad returned seven players from his 1988 silver medalist team and two days before the opening ceremonies, Yugoslavia, the Goliath of international water polo, was banned from these Olympics.

“We became the favorite then,” said U.S. team captain Terry Schroeder, “mainly because we won the World Cup last year. At least we were one of the favorites; Spain, at home, would have been the other. . . .

“I really thought we had a great chance to win the gold.”

So did most of the members of United States Water Polo, the national governing body, which has assembled a five-person committee to determine whether Barnett should be rehired to coach the 1996 Olympic team in Atlanta.

It doesn’t look good. You may have noticed the towel-dried warriors who congregated on the victory stand Sunday afternoon.

First: Italy.

Second: Spain.

Third: Unified Team.

The Americans did not place and were barely able to show their faces after an 8-4 drubbing by the Unified Team in Sunday’s bronze-medal game. This came on the heels of Saturday’s 6-4 semifinal loss to Spain and Wednesday’s 8-5 Group A loss to the Unified Team, leaving the United States a very mundane 4-3 for Barcelona.

Initially, Barnett was going to make it easy for the USWP. He said he was planning to retire as national coach after the ’92 Games but reconsidered when Atlanta received the bid for ’96.

“I’m going to run again,” Barnett said Sunday. “I don’t know if I’ll be hired, but I’d like to go one more quadrennial and finish up in Atlanta. Since we’re the host, we automatically qualify for the Olympics, which takes off a lot of pressure. I’d like to finish my career with the national team in my home country.”

First place here would have made Barnett a lock, said one USWP official.

A medal would have given him a fighting chance.

Fourth place?

Barnett’s chances are now “about 1%,” the official said.

Losing the bronze was only part of it. The way Barnett lost it, with an aging nucleus and too few young lungs, is what truly places him in jeopardy.

Five of Barnett’s 13 players are 30 or older, including goalie Craig Wilson (35) and Schroeder (33). It was the oldest team in Group A, averaging 28 years a man. Only two players, two-meter men Chris Humbert and Alex Rousseau, are under 25.

Barnett had gambled on the veterans bringing home the gold and then breaking up the team amid grins and backslaps, rebuilding his ’96 unit around Humbert, Rosseau and reserve goalie Chris Duplanty.

Instead, his team looked old in the water when it mattered the most. After averaging eight goals per game through the preliminary rounds, the Americans scored only four in each of three medal-round games--shooting four for 30 (13%) overall and two for 12 with the extra-man advantage against the Unified Team.

“Our shooting was somewhere between here and Los Angeles,” said Barnett, managing a half-smile. “It took the early flight out of town. We came out and played hard, I thought, but we just couldn’t put the ball in the cage.”

Wilson and Schroeder are retiring, with nothing to gain or lose if Barnett stays or goes. Yet when asked if Barnett deserved a third term, both were less than enthusiastic in their support.

“I’ll let other people draw their own conclusions,” Wilson said. “The committee will have to decide if this team was well-prepared. I don’t point fingers, I don’t make accusations. The way I look at it, once the game begins, it’s the players who win or lose.”

Schroeder, the team captain, said Barnett “has done a good job, getting the silver in ’88 and placing in the top four here. Even though we’re all disappointed, placing in the top four is not too bad, although I’m not sure what the committee thinks.”

Asked if he felt Barnett should return for ‘96, Schroeder paused for several seconds before responding.

“It’s not up to me,” was how he broke the silence. “I’d probably be better off saying, ‘No comment.’ ”

Barnett, who turns 50 in three weeks, has coached water polo for 26 years and continues to coach the sport at Newport Harbor High School. Leaning against a wall outside the water polo press center, he tried to assess his Olympic situation realistically, if a tad hopefully.

“It depends on the committee’s philosophy,” he said. “It could be, ‘If you don’t win a medal in the Olympics, you’re out.’ In a professional sports organization, if you don’t win, you’re out. . . .

“I’m prejudiced. I think I did a pretty good job. We went from an eighth-place finish in the World Cup in ’89 to fifth in the Goodwill Games in ’90 to fourth in the World Championships to winning the World Cup in ’91. We’ve been building, going in the right direction.

“But, again, it depends on their philosophy. They may say, ‘Hey, you gotta win a medal. And if you can’t, we’ll find somebody who will.’ ”

The committee will interview candidates and make an announcement in early September. But the decision might have been made Sunday.