Water Polo Final Four Has New Meaning

It isn’t every day that you get a chance to make history, but players from four teams will do exactly that by competing in the inaugural NCAA women’s water polo tournament beginning today.

Loyola Marymount junior Lucy Windes will be one of those players.

“I just think it’s a wonderful opportunity,” she said. “It’s so exciting to be part of this. It’s so cool to know you’re one of the teams.”

Today at Stanford, the Lions will play UCLA in one semifinal and the Cardinal will face Brown in the other. The winners play for the first NCAA title Sunday.

It won’t be the first championship experience for Loyola. The Lions, whose 22-6 record is the best in the program’s history, were invited to the 16-team National Collegiate Championships last season and finished 13th.

But in Coach John Loughran’s mind, this is a different story.

“There’s a respect level, with it being an NCAA-sponsored event, that it didn’t have before,” he said. “I think it brings more integrity to the event.

“The great part is, we’re at a history-making event . . . the first-ever final four for women. We’ll always go down as one of the teams that were in it.”

UCLA Coach Adam Krikorian also understands the significance.

“Obviously, and most important, it’s going to help with awareness about our sport,” he said. “Hopefully, it will increase our popularity. But there are negatives.”

Krikorian cites the shrinking tournament. Within the NCAA format, several teams that have been ranked higher than Loyola or Brown--for example USC and California--are not competing.

It is much like men’s volleyball in that three teams get automatic berths and one is left for an at-large pick. UCLA, the at-large team, is playing only because it defeated the Trojans in double overtime in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation semifinals before losing to Stanford in the title match.

“There a lot of very good teams that are not part of this weekend,” Krikorian said.

The other thing is, the veteran coach does not value this tournament higher than any of the previous. UCLA has won four national titles, most recently last year’s.

“To say this is something different would take away from what we did in the past,” Krikorian said.

A key part in the Lions’ rise has been a state-of-the-art aquatic facility that is part of the $20-million Burns Recreation Center that opened last year.

The facility has helped Loyola get the 2002 NCAA men’s water polo tournament. That, in turn, has boosted the Lions’ recruiting efforts as well as their image. In previous years, Loyola played its home matches either in an old campus pool or at a high school 15 miles away.

“For some of the freshmen, all they’ve seen is this pool,” Windes said. “For us older girls, we tell them, ‘You don’t know how it used to be.’ ”

The Bruins (16-4) have lost to only one team. That team, Stanford, is the heavy favorite and will have the home crowd. At 26-0, Stanford can become the first team to go through a season undefeated.

U.S. national team star Brenda Villa of Bell Gardens High leads Stanford with 66 points.

“They have three of the best players in the nation and they’re at different positions,” Krikorian said. “Brenda Villa, without a doubt, is their leader. And they have phenomenal players at the two-meter in Ellen Estes and Jackie Frank in goal.

“They’re the big three. And then they have that veteran senior leadership around them.”

The closest UCLA came to defeating Stanford was 7-6 in the Nor Cal tournament final Feb. 11. Krikorian said the only way the Bruins can break through is to convert often when it has a man-advantage situation.

“You always want to try to be 50% when you’re on a six-on-five or a five-on-four and when you’re a man down, you want to hold the team to about 33%,” he said. “We’ve been anemic this year on the power play, about 20 to 30%, and we need to do better than that to have a chance.”

USC’s tennis teams will hit the road for the first round of the NCAA tournament. The 12th-ranked Trojan women are 17-7 and are top-seeded in a four-team regional at Norfolk, Va., where they will face Maryland Baltimore County today. The men, led by Pacific 10 singles champion Ryan Moore, are 13-8 and play Virginia at Oxford, Miss.

The UCLA men, ranked third at 20-2, host a regional and will play Sacramento State today at the L.A. Tennis Center. Pepperdine (17-7) will play Western Michigan in Palo Alto.

On the women’s side, the Waves (18-8) face Pennsylvania at Waco, Texas, and UCLA, despite its 7-17 record, earned a berth and will play Georgia Tech at Fresno.

College Division

Claremont-Mudd-Scripps won its first NCAA Division III women’s water polo championship in nine years with a 5-3 victory over Redlands in two overtimes at Redlands. Kelly Freeman scored the tiebreaking goal in the first overtime for the Athenas. Katie Reichert was named the tournament’s most valuable player.

Azusa Pacific junior Matt Dzama tied National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics records for home runs with four, and RBIs with 13 during a recent 14-4 victory over Biola. Dzama went five for five, hitting two three-run home runs, a grand slam and a two-run homer. He also had a run-scoring single. Dzama, a 6-foot-1 outfielder, had hit only five previous home runs.