Law School Helps Krumins Sharpen His Competitive Edge : Water polo: Newport Harbor graduate is successfully juggling his time while he trains for U.S. national team.

Eriks Krumins found a way to make water polo, one of the most demanding sports, even more taxing: he enrolled in law school.

It was tough enough to go to practices with the U.S. national team when there didn’t seem to be enough time for anything but studying. It didn’t help when the team took an eight-day trip to Cuba that wiped out the first week of his second semester at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

But then the final exams for his first year coincided with his first major international water polo tournament, the FINA Cup in Athens, Greece, last month.

Something had to give, you might think.

Not quite, Krumins just gave a little more. First, he arranged to take his finals after returning from Greece. Then as a starting driver, he played a crucial role in the U.S. team’s fourth-place finish.

Finally, he returned to Loyola to take five 3 1/2-hour finals within two weeks.

He survived, he believes.

“I was playing catch-up from the very beginning of the semester,” he said. “I haven’t checked my grades yet, but I did well my first semester, and I’m sure I was fine.”

Introducing Eriks Krumins, part of a new wave of players in their first year on the top U.S. national team, which is competing in the Alamo Cup this week at four Southland sites.

Krumins, a Newport Harbor graduate, might not look the part with his sun-bleached hair and downwardly mobile beach wear, but he is an especially motivated man.

“A lot of people don’t expect me to be a law student because I have a kind of unkept beach-type aura about me,” Krumins said. “Some of the language I use comes from growing up in Newport. But Loyola is a progressive law school.

“There are people there with tattoos and nipple rings. It goes from that extreme to people with families, people who are already millionaires or someone like me who is training for the Olympics.”

Krumins has yet to decide where he wants to apply a law degree--possibly in the music industry--but his immediate goals are clear.

“I want to finish law school and pass the bar and I want to get a gold medal at the Olympics in Atlanta,” he said.

“There are obviously a lot of checkpoints I have to get through before that. I have to make this team and I have to do all I can to help the team get a gold medal . . . and it’s not an easy road.”

Certainly not. International water polo is dominated by European teams, which have won every Olympic gold medal in water polo since 1904 when the United States was the only nation to participate.

The 1984 and ’88 teams came close, each earning silver medals behind Yugoslavia, but in 1992, the United States slipped to fourth.

After Barcelona, the national team’s governing body replaced Bill Barnett, the coach at Newport Harbor, with Rich Corso, the coach at North Hollywood Harvard-Westlake, as the national coach. Eight of 13 players have retired, leaving a number of spots for which younger players such as Krumins are competing.

Krumins, who has a good chance of making the Olympic team, knows the odds are against a U.S. gold medal, but he considers it a challenge; it wouldn’t be the first time he has proved wrong those who underestimated him.

As a 6-foot-2, 165-pound senior at Newport Harbor, Krumins was barely recruited, so he took the initiative, introducing himself with letters to the top programs.

His credentials seemed solid. He was the best player on a team that reached the Southern Section semifinals in consecutive seasons. He was well-coached, taught by Barnett. He had a 3.9 grade-point average and an above-average score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

Because of his size, however, few predicted he would become a dominant college player and he received rejection letters from Stanford and UCLA. California was more inviting, but the recruiting perks were few.

“I drove my old station wagon up to Berkeley and got a free lunch from (then-coach Pete) Cutino,” Krumins said. “That was about it.”

Krumins didn’t need to be sold. He knew Cal had one of the nation’s strongest programs and winning an NCAA championship or two was possible.

Try three. By the time, Krumins was through at Cal, the Golden Bears had reached the finals four times, winning in 1988, ’90 and ’91. Krumins, who had grown to 6-6 and 190 pounds, was a two-time first-team All-American.

Meanwhile, he was moving up the ranks of U.S. Water Polo. He played on the junior national team that finished fourth in the Junior World Championships in 1989. In 1990, he was promoted to the national B team, which won the title at the 1991 World University Games.

Now after the mass retirements, Krumins is getting his chance at the top level.

He got his first major international experience at the FINA Cup and the reviews are mixed.

Ricardo Azevedo, assistant U.S. coach, said considering the circumstances, Krumins’ performance was excellent.

Because of law school, Krumins was unable to make a pre-FINA Cup training trip to Moscow, so when he rejoined the team in Athens he was a bit rusty.

“Eriks did a tremendous job just being there,” Azevedo said. “I don’t think he played as well as he can play but as a coach sometimes you have to realize what our players are going through.”

Krumins is less kind.

“I didn’t play well at the FINA Cup,” he said. “I recognize there were reasons for it, but excuses don’t have much importance in my book.

“I know how I can play even given what I was going through.”

Krumins is confident that the worst is over. The first year of law school is considered the most demanding. After two more years at Loyola, he will take the bar and then have almost a year to train full time for the Olympics.

Azevedo says Krumins is the type of player the team could use. He’s versatile, bigger than the average driver with a good outside shot.

“He’s strong enough to hold his position inside and he has tremendous quickness,” Azevedo said. “But that’s not his biggest asset. His biggest asset is that he’ll do absolutely anything it takes to win.”