Water Music

Jason Falitz of Burroughs High, perhaps the best two-meter water polo player in the region, is strong, stern and serious in the pool.

But out of the water he is sunny, silly and songful.

“He’s very unique,” Burroughs Coach Rey Rivera said. “He has a completely different demeanor away from the pool.”

Falitz leads the region in scoring for the second consecutive year and is a member of a national champion chamber choir group at Burroughs.

Falitz, who has flirted with several sports and extra-curricular activities in his young life, has narrowed his loves to two: water polo and singing.

“I love music, I love to sing,” he said.

Yet, Rich Corso, Harvard-Westlake’s coach who has mentored Falitz in club competition for three years, has never heard Falitz so much as whistle a tune.

But he has seen him hum around the goal.

“He does all his singing with the ball,” Corso said. “He loves to score and I think that’s a great gift in a player.

“He loves being with the ball. He loves being around the ball. Clearly in my mind, if he’s not the best player in the area, he’s got to be in the top two.”

Falitz’s stock has been on the rise since he began playing water polo four summers ago at the suggestion of a school counselor.

Although he had no experience in competitive swimming and no knowledge of water polo, he was game to give it a try.

“As soon as I played it, I loved it,” Falitz said.

He made the varsity team as a freshman--only a few months after being introduced to the game--and cracked the starting lineup at driver by midseason.

That same year, Falitz was a member of a school chamber choir group that won a national title at Disneyland.

But after three years of juggling singing and water polo, Falitz dropped the chamber choir because it was cutting into his time in the pool.

“It was too much on my plate at one time and it made things really stressful,” Falitz said. “I wanted to dedicate all my time to making the [water polo] program as good as it could be.”

The decision has paid dividends. Burroughs, which finished 19-8 and reached the Southern Section Division III semifinals last year, is 16-3 entering its Almont League opener Friday against Bell Gardens.

No team in the region relies as heavily on one player as Burroughs does on Falitz. But no other team has a player quite like Falitz, who has received recruiting interest from Pepperdine, California and Loyola Marymount.

“This kid is a stud, a world-class athlete,” said George Akopyan, a Burroughs assistant. “This kid could have played any sport he wanted.”

Falitz’s 187 goals last season ranks fourth on the state’s all-time single season list.

Although Falitz faces defenses designed to shut him down, he continues to score in bunches.

He has 132 goals in 19 games and is on pace to eclipse his 1998 total.

But Falitz, who played baseball, soccer and roller hockey when he was younger, is not concerned with numbers and records.

“The main goal for me is the team and [playoffs],” he said. “If [a record] happens, it happens, but it’s not my main objective.”

The 6-foot-2, 170-pound Falitz, who has scored in every game this season, is small for a two-meter player. But he plays big.

“He’s not as thick as a lot of them are, which is why it was so easy [for me] to notice that he was a good player,” said Rivera, who took over as Burroughs coach at midseason last year.

“[But] he is still dominating at maintaining position because he has strong legs, and he’s still able to get a good shot off because he’s a finesse player.”

By all accounts, Falitz’s defense has steadily improved. But there is no question where he is most comfortable.

“When you come up with a shooting drill, his eyes get the size of silver dollars and he hears every word you say,” Corso said.