UC IRVINE NOTEBOOK / JOHN WEYLER : A Rare Vacation Opened Puritz’s Eyes

Maybe the revelation struck while he clung to the raft that bobbed wildly downriver. Maybe it came while on horseback, trotting along a trail through the timber. Or maybe it hit when he stopped his bike on a lookout point to survey the majesty of the Rockies.

Mike Puritz took a vacation to Aspen this summer with his wife, Judy, and their 7-year-old daughter, Elise, and at some point he began to question his priorities. Only 42, he had already devoted half of his life to his work, a full-time, every-waking-hour job without end.

This epiphany reached a peak this fall and Puritz resigned during the last month of his 16th season as the UC Irvine women’s volleyball coach. He will remain at the school as director of the Recreational Instruction Program.

“It was the first week of vacation we’ve had in four years and it was such a great experience,” Puritz said. “It really got me thinking about enjoying life a little and spending more time with my family.

“For 20 years, I’ve never been to Hawaii, or even Santa Barbara, when I wasn’t working. For 16 years, I devoted every weekend to volleyball. If we weren’t playing, I was scouting or recruiting.

“Sixteen years ago, I told my wife that if I put in the time then, it would make it easier later. But it didn’t work out that way. The demand just kept increasing. Even at home, you’re on the phone all night. Your time is never your own.”

When the school decided to disband the physical education department and put administration of regular P.E. classes under the auspices of Campus Recreation last year, Puritz was recruited to help out. When the job of director was created, he saw his opportunity for a more normal lifestyle.

“I had to make a decision about the rest of my career,” he said. “The opportunity was there and if I waited, it would be gone. It wasn’t an easy decision by any means, but I talked to all my friends and my coaching peers and they all said, ‘Hey, you lucked out.’ ”

The Anteaters haven’t exactly ripped up the Big West--arguably the best women’s volleyball conference in the nation--in recent years. After a 6-22 record last year, Puritz had high expectations for this season’s team. But Irvine has continued to stagger and is 5-19, 2-14 in the Big West with two conference matches remaining Friday and Saturday at Utah State.

“I wouldn’t be telling you the truth if I didn’t admit that the frustration with our inability to live up to my hopes played some role,” Puritz said. “It’s been a very tough couple of years for me. But that just made it a little easier, it wasn’t a key or anything. The deciding factors would have still been there, if we were 19-5.”

Irvine won its final home match, defeating San Jose State Saturday to end a nine-match losing streak.

“But I will say that’s my only regret,” Puritz said, “that we haven’t been able to finish on the kind of strong note I know this team is capable of.”

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Good omen: It happened 1 minute 10 seconds into the Anteaters’ first exhibition game last week. First-team All-Big West point guard Raimonds Miglinieks fired a bullet pass through a maze of defenders that somehow found the hands of last season’s freshman of the year Kevin Simmons as he slashed toward the basket.

Simmons made a layup, Miglinieks had his first assist of the 1995-96 season and the 1,875 fans in the Bren Center were reminded that these two guys certainly make watching basketball fun.

“Those are two of the most exciting players in the league,” Long Beach State Coach Seth Greenberg said. “Sometimes you forget about coaching and you just become a fan. It’s like, ‘How did he see that guy open?’ Some of those passes . . . it’s just amazing.”

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On the defensive: Miglinieks, who was third in the nation in assists (8.4 per game) with a school record 245 last season, also was the team’s most prolific and accurate three-point shooter. He made 61 of 153 attempts (39%).

The Latvian native wasn’t on anybody’s all-defender team, though. But it wasn’t for a lack of effort.

“He just has to battle that European mentality of defense,” Coach Rod Baker said. “To make a sort of blanket statement of European basketball, their priorities are shoot the ball, pass the ball and probably four or five other things before you get to defend the ball.”

“It’s not that he doesn’t want to defend. He really gives you an honest effort on every possession, but it’s not something that is drilled into their minds.”

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Tough guy: Ted Newland, in his 30th season as Anteater water polo coach, has a back injury that has put a serious dent in his usual thousands-of-sit-ups-a-day regimen. But he hasn’t shaken his addiction to exercise.

“Now, it’s a million bar dips and a million pull-ups,” senior Omar Amr said. “He finds an exercise he can do and then he makes us do it. And we die because we can’t keep up. He kills us in everything.

“He’s easily the toughest man I’ve ever met.”

Anteater Notes

The women’s cross-country team, led by Jo-Jo Yaba’s 13th-place finish, took seventh in the 20-team NCAA District 8 regional championships Saturday in Woodland, Wash. Yaba, was awarded an individual berth in the NCAA Championships Monday in Ames, Iowa. Yaba, a senior, has been a bit of a late bloomer, but the Big West athlete of the year in cross-country has been running strong since last year when she was runner-up in the conference cross-country meet. “She just caught fire last year,” Coach Vince O’Boyle said. “She had a great end of the cross-country season and it carried over into track season. She had personal bests in everything she ran.” In the Big West track and field championship meet last spring, Yaba finished third in the 10,000 meters on Friday, then placed second and fifth in 5,000 and 3,000 on Saturday.

The water polo team’s 10-8 loss to second-ranked UCLA Saturday probably means the Anteaters will have to win the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament to get an NCAA berth. Under a new format, only four teams will play in the NCAAs this year. Three spots are decided by conference championships and one will be filled by an at-large team. That team will come from the MPSF, which includes the top seven teams in the country, but the Anteaters, tied with California for No. 3, are in line behind UCLA and USC. The Trojans were ranked No. 1, but lost to fifth-ranked Pepperdine last weekend. New national rankings will be released today. The conference tournament begins Nov. 22 at Long Beach’s Belmont Plaza and the NCAAs are set for Dec. 1-3 at Stanford.