Newland Is an Old Pro : UCI’s Veteran Water Polo Coach Still Knows How to Inspire Winners

A solitary wisp of cloud hovers above the horizon, its belly alight with the first colors of a new day, casting a rose-pink hue across the pool deck.

Another dawn, another workout, another opportunity to spread the water polo word. Another chance to mold young men into winners.

Ted Newland’s been doing just that for 31 years at Irvine, where the Anteaters have competed in 21 of 27 NCAA tournaments, more than any team in the country. And now he’s rolling up to victory No. 600 at Irvine. . . literally. He coaches from a wheelchair these days, but you wouldn’t want to use the word disabled anywhere in his vicinity.

The “old man,” as he always calls himself, can still do 75 consecutive bar dips, 49 chin-ups without stopping and a couple thousand sit-ups in an hour.

“I’ve never stopped lifting weights,” says Newland, who is widely credited with introducing weight-training as a key component in water polo workout regimens. “Hell, I’m as strong as I’ve been in a long time.”

The Patton who paced the pool deck before dawn and after dusk almost every day for 41 years is now hell on wheels for one reason: He likes to sleep at night.

Newland, 68, is paying the price of a lifetime of fitness fanaticism. His obsession with running, biking and working out has worn all the cartilage out of his right knee. His left knee is in only slightly better shape.

“It’s down to bone on bone in the right knee,” he says. “I’d probably walk three to five miles on the deck every day and it gets pretty painful. Then I don’t get much sleep.

“At the last World University Games, a doctor suggested I get a wheelchair. It beats the hell out of a plastic knee, a stainless-steel kneecap, eight months of rehab and no guarantee it would be any damn better.”

The sun is up now and streams of gold flow between dark shadows. Newland spins to bark some instructions to his charges. “We’ll do 20 50s on 45,” he yells. “First group, BIP! Next group, BIP! Next BIP!”

There are a few audible groans, but muscular bodies obediently splash off on their mission at Newland’s shouts. Twenty consecutive 50-yard dashes, each completed with five or 10 seconds to gulp air before the next begins.

“I’m good at this, I enjoy it, so I do it,” says Newland, who has worked at Irvine without a salary since the athletic administration threatened to drop water polo in 1991. “And the players want me to continue coaching, which gives me great leverage. I tell them, ‘If you want to screw around, fine, then I’ll just quit.’

“They [tee] me off sometimes, but they’re really great kids, so I plan on continuing as long as it’s fun and my health holds. I figure at least until I’m 80 . . . maybe a little longer.”

Can a 70- or even 80-year-old in a wheelchair command the kind of respect a coach requires?

No doubt here. When Newland talks, everybody listens.

“There was this kid from the [college newspaper] at one of our workouts one morning when Newland was going off on one of his tirades,” said a player who asked to remain anonymous. “He was saying that all our classes were total [B.S.] because they can’t teach you what life is really like in a classroom.

“Then he realizes the kid is there and he looks around and screams, ‘If you print any of this, I’ll kick your [butt].”’

Did Newland’s comments appear in print?

“No way,” the player said. “Newland wasn’t kidding . . . and the kid knew it.”

Newland may be, as senior Omar Amr says, “the toughest man I know,” but he clearly is not a one-dimensional taskmaster bent on bending young bodies into water-logged Arnold Schwarzeneggers.

OK, it’s true. He does schedule a workout every Christmas morning.

But, hey, it’s voluntary.

And sure, he spends much of his time following the bouncing yellow ball as it skips across the water. But he spends just as much time striving to convince athletes that the sport is merely a microcosm for an existence where hard work, discipline and teamwork are rewarded.

“I think outsiders tend to think of him as a fanatic, but I’ve always thought of it as dedication,” said Corona del Mar High Coach John Vargas, a former Irvine player who was recently named coach of the U.S. national team. “He’s a very structured guy, but he allows you to create, to become your own player.

“He’s been a tremendous influence on me. A lot of the things I do daily, from designing the dynamics of a practice to my own personal workouts, I got from him. There are a ton of ways he’s influenced me, but what I’ll always remember most, and what I respect the most, was that he always treated every one of us like a man. You weren’t a high school kid anymore.”

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Ted Newland, by his own admission a “not-so-good goalie” at Occidental, was a very good student. He graduated at the top of his class in his major, political science.

He came to Newport Harbor High in 1955 as a history teacher, agreed to coach swimming and water polo because “in those days everyone had to do some kind of extracurricular [stuff]” and quickly learned he could disseminate more historical perspective, insight and philosophy on a pool deck or in the team bus than he ever could in the classroom.

“People want to learn,” he said, “but you have to be able to relate to them. Most of these kids’ professors barely know their names. I know all of their parents, most of their lady friends. I know their strengths and their weaknesses. I get very attached to them and I like to watch them grow.

“It’s like a family. And I’m here to teach them about life.”

His poolside lectures--some might call them ramblings--are ripe with historical analogies, morality plays and Newlandesque lessons of life.

“That’s what I’m going to miss most when I graduate,” senior Jeff Andrews said. “Even when he’s laying into us, he’s really entertaining. The other day, he was ripping into us and went off on this tangent about monkeys. Everyone was trying to keep a straight face, but we all started busting up and then he started laughing too.

“He’s quite a human being. He’s so sharp, so bright. I know I’m a better person for having known him. He’s one of those people who will live on in guys like me long after he’s gone.”

The Cult of Newland has expanded with the computer age. The guru signs on to the Internet every afternoon, sending brief daily messages to his biological children, corresponding with the hundreds in his former-player family and critiquing/reminding/challenging his current players.

“I talk to him all the time,” Vargas said, “and now I’m going online real soon. I’m sure he’s going to e-mail the hell out of me.”

Newland’s wife, Anne, has put together an attractive web site that features updates on the adventures of the Anteaters.

“I love e-mail,” Newland says, beaming. “I’m introverted and not very social outside of my family and the players. I’m not what you’d call friendly.”

Unless you play water polo. Then you’ve got a friend for life. He persuades almost all of his players to be redshirts one year so they can be together at Irvine for five years.

“I like having someone to talk to in the weight room and I like them when they’re more mature,” he said. “Freshmen are so squirrelly.”

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After stints as a club coach, high school coach, college coach and national-team coach--many of which ran concurrently--Newland figures he has coached about 5,000 water polo games over the last 41 years.

He doesn’t consider himself a master tactician, however, and often consults his players on the best plan of attack.

He’ll take motivated players over super strategy every time.

“Being a good psychologist is more important than being a good tactician,” he said. “Motivating your kids so they want to play hard for you is what it’s all about.”

Newland’s knack for bringing the best out of an athlete is what brings many of the best athletes to Irvine, where the Anteaters have won three NCAA titles and lost in the championship game six times.

His connections in the community have fostered a fund-raising effort that is providing him with the NCAA-maximum 4 1/2 scholarships this season, but Irvine still can’t compete for the very best high school players. They usually end up at Stanford or California, where a degree means a lot of money to a job-hunting graduate.

“You don’t win many recruiting wars with them,” Newland admitted, “but the numbers in this sport are really high now and there are a lot of players with a lot of potential out there.

“There are only a few [high school] programs with full-time coaches and if you pay $1,000 for a [walk-on] coach, you’re going to get a $1,000 worth of coaching. So a lot of these kids are really raw.”

And that, of course, is where the “old man” comes in. He trains the body. He trains the mind.

“It’s not that difficult to work and overcome the physical aspect of the game, but teaching kids mental toughness is hard,” he said. “The ability to deal with the present is a very hard thing to do. We all think about what happened in the past or what people will think about us in the future.

“Mental toughness is learning to center on the present and the ability to maintain your concentration when you’re mentally tired.”

Irvine, which will have played only two games in the last three weeks, should be fresh when it hosts Pacific at noon Saturday at Heritage Park and then travels to La Jolla to play UC Diego Sunday. So there’s a good chance the fifth-ranked Anteaters (9-6 overall and 5-1 in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) will provide Newland with his 600th victory at Irvine this weekend.

Newland, who was inducted in the U.S. Water Polo Hall of Fame last year, is 598-240-5, which makes him the winningest coach in collegiate water polo history with a winning percentage of .714.

But 600 is no magic number for Newland.

“It doesn’t mean much to me,” he said. “It just says something about longevity is all.”

His nonchalance doesn’t mean others won’t marvel at the milestone.

“I don’t care what sport you’re talking about, or how many games you play every year,” Irvine men’s basketball Coach Rod Baker said, shaking his head in awe. “Six hundred is a lot of victories. . . a lot of victories.”