He Is Playing Out an American Dream

Peter Janov had seen the results of his son’s efforts at getting a water polo scholarship to a university in the United States--actually, he hadn’t seen the results because there weren’t any--so he wasn’t too keen on this new idea of contacting California community colleges.

“I wrote to 130 universities,” the younger Peter Janov said, “It cost about $500 just to send all the letters. Some coaches wrote back and said they don’t take international players. Some didn’t write back at all. But nothing worked out.

“One coach, I don’t remember which one, said nobody would take a player from Slovakia without seeing him play and that I should try the community colleges in California.”

So Janov scrounged up the postage for 25 more letters.

This time, eight coaches responded, and one, Golden West’s Ken Hamdorf, came up with the closer on the deal: He would help Janov find a job and a place to stay.

“After the first letters, my father said, ‘Why are you doing this? You will not find a place,’ ” Janov said. “But this has been my dream since childhood, since I first started playing water polo on a club team when I was 7. I didn’t have any friends or family in America, but I knew I was going to find some way.

“My father finally told me, ‘If you find the room and board, I’ll pay for the plane ticket.’ ”

Due to district rules, Hamdorf couldn’t promise either room or board. Unlike some community colleges in the state, the school does not sponsor the tuition of foreign athletes.

But Janov had closed all his letters with, “I know the way to the top of hill will be long and hard journey, but I’m willing to work hard and my slogan to myself is, ‘Believe in yourself.’ ”

And that message resounded for Hamdorf.

“When I got the letter, I showed it to my wife and said, ‘I want this guy.’ It might have sounded hokey to a lot of people, but to me it showed that he had heart and the guts to put that down on paper. Most guys these days are too cool to write anything like that.

“So we began corresponding and I told him I’d do everything I could to help. It was a long and arduous process, but it was worth every minute of time I spent to get him here.”

This weekend, Janov’s quest could reach a peak.

After two years at Golden West, he transferred to USC and has become an ironman at the two-meter position for the No. 1-ranked Trojans, who are favored to win the national title at the NCAA championships Friday and Sunday at the Marian Bergeson Aquatics Center at Corona del Mar High.

Janov, who was a first-team All-American and the Southern California co-player of the year as a sophomore at Golden West, is the Trojans’ fifth-leading scorer with 33 goals and one of their primary two-meter defenders.

“Yes, he wrote to me originally, and I wrote back,” USC co-head coach Jovan Vavic said. “I had never seen him play and of course that’s a problem, but we didn’t have any scholarships at the time anyway.”

Vavic saw plenty of Janov during Janov’s community college career, especially as a sophomore when he scored 74 goals and led the team with 38 assists.

“He’s a very intelligent, very mature player,” Vavic said, “He’s also very focused and consistent. You always know what you’re going to get from Peter. He’s a coach’s dream, really.” Vavic, a native of Yugoslavia, knows the obstacles Janov has surmounted in pursuit of his dream.

“To come here from an Eastern Bloc country is not easy,” he said. “With all the hard work he’s done, all the odd jobs he has had to do to survive, it’s not surprising he’s greatly motivated.”

From Janov’s point of view, the transition really wasn’t that difficult.

After getting his father to buy the one-way ticket, he arrived at LAX and was met by three Golden West players--Hamdorf was out of town--including goalie David Breihan, whose family provided Janov with his first bed in America.

Janov’s English was good enough to make himself understood, but not always good enough that he could understand, especially when his hosts lapsed into slang. He was awe-struck by the freeways, but his own promised land was just as he had always dreamed it would be.

The kid from the Bloc didn’t even feel like the new kid on the block.

“I wasn’t ready for all the cars,” he said, “but I was not uncomfortable or homesick. It felt like I had lived here before.”

So Janov dived into the pool and his new life with equal enthusiasm and vigor. He practiced in the early morning, went to classes and studied before afternoon practice and--because he needed about $3,500 to pay his first year’s tuition--wedged in jobs cleaning the gymnasium and refereeing and coaching youth teams.

“When he first got here, the only legal work he could do was on campus,” Hamdorf said. “One of his first jobs was to clean the gym. And here that means really cleaning the gym. Peter was willing to work day and night to stay here and he would smile the whole time. And the gym was never cleaner.”

Every once in a while, an academic roadblock would wipe the smile off his face, but Janov persevered and plodded ahead.

“Before the 1989 revolution [in the former Czechoslovakia], Russian was required, but I took English after that,” Janov said. “In this world today, you must learn English. I had kind of a hard time at first in school, but I never dropped a class and I never failed a class. It’s even harder now because here they require more research papers and you have to organize every single minute of your life.”

At times, coaching and refereeing kids, who had “only a vague idea that he was an international-caliber player,” according to Hamdorf, was more demeaning than his janitorial duties.

“It was hard but the coaching helped my water polo because you get to see the game from a different angle,” Janov said. “And working as a referee helped me as a player too. I’m 24 and this 12-year-old kid in the pool is trying to teach me the game. I learned not to talk back to the referees.”

When Janov wrote another round of letters to universities, none of them found the round file. Everybody replied.

Janov chose USC because this too had become part of his American Dream.

“From the very beginning I wanted to come to USC. I know they have never won [an NCAA water polo title] and that makes me work harder. Every game is a step to get higher. And at the end, it’s better to be the one standing on the top than one of the thousands trying to get up.”

Two more steps, two more victories, and the Trojans will have their first water polo championship.

Win or lose, Janov is already pulling himself up onto the pinnacle of that hill he described in his letters from Slovakia.

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Water Polo

* What: NCAA men’s water polo championships

* When: Friday and Sunday

* Where: Marian Bergeson Aquatics Center, Corona del Mar High

* Schedule: Friday--USC (23-2) vs. UMass (27-4) at 6:30 p.m.; Stanford (20-6) vs. UC San Diego (17-11) at 8. Sunday--Third-place game at 1:30 p.m.; championship at 3.

* Last year’s results: Pepperdine won the national championship by defeating USC, 8-7, in overtime.

* Tickets: Adults: $12 each day, $20 for a two-day pass. Students and seniors: $8 each day, $15 for a two-day pass.

* Information: (949) 824-6202