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  NICOLE MILLER/Daily Bruin Senior Blake Wellen prepares to pass the ball as the Bruins snag the title at the NCAA championships.

By Rekha Rao

Daily Bruin Contributor

For the UCLA men’s water polo team, this season has been like no other. The season started with the team missing head coach Guy Baker and senior Sean Kern to the Olympics for the first couple games and ended with the team losing senior captain Adam Wright the last few games due to NCAA ineligibility.

Yet the Bruins still won the championship.

“The one last year was great, and this one was just as good. This championship showed how much of a team we really are,” Kern said. “Each of the five seniors playing (in the final game) scored and that showed how much of a team we really are.”

Baker said that it did not matter who the team played, if they continued to play defense and play their game, they would win.

And win they did. Before the forfeit of five games because of Wright’s ineligibility, the Bruins held a 22-2 record and were the top-ranked team in the nation.

The Bruins started off the season with a jump. They beat Pepperdine in the Wasko Tournament, but fell to UC Irvine the next weekend. The Anteaters, the only team to beat UCLA outright twice, were a problem for the Bruins during the season.

  NICOLE MILLER/Daily Bruin Junior Kyle Baumgarner raises the ball high in the air during the NCAA title game, in which the Bruins beat the UCSD Tritons. “This is a part of athletics. You are always going to have losses and get better. We were disappointed but we had to move on,” Krikorian said.

UCLA played crosstown rival USC four times and beat them in three of the contests. The first meeting was in the Southern California Tournament on Sept. 17, where the Bruins lost to the then-No. 1 Trojans 5-4. In their second meeting, with Kern’s help on Oct. 7, the Bruins easily won 7-5. The Bruins won again (6-5) on Nov. 18 at the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center, right before the UCLA-USC football game.

“It is fun to play at the Rose Bowl. We were really fired up to play,” sophomore goalie Brandon Brooks said.

The two teams met one more time in a non-conference game. There the Bruins again prevailed 6-5.

No other team besides UCI and USC stood a chance against the Bruins.

Six graduating seniors – Kern, Wright, Dave Parker, Andy Bailey, Blake Wellen, and Brian Brown – led UCLA through this winning season.

This tight-knit group acted more like family than teammates, and provided leadership the team needed.

Covering most of the goal, literally and figuratively, Brooks held the defense together for the Bruins.

“He is definitely the best goalie in the nation right now,” Baker said.

With a month left in their season and postseason, tragedy struck for UCLA.

Wright was declared ineligible by the NCAA due to a redshirt infraction committed during his freshman year. He had played in one quarter of one game before hurting his shoulder, and sat out the rest of the season as a medical redshirt. Due to a misunderstanding, however, the redshirt papers were never filed.

Despite legal efforts to renew his position on the team, the Bruins had to face the reality of the NCAA decision. This was a major blow for the team, who looked to Wright for inspiration and guidance. He was made the voluntary undergraduate assistant coach and continued to practice with the team.

“This has been such a motivating factor for us. We would all rather lose and have Adam (Wright) play, than win and have him not play,” Baker said. “We focused and overcame some obstacles, and I think we did good in that area.”

Next came the MPSF tournament, with the winner of the tournament getting the conference’s automatic berth to the Final Four. One other MPSF team would get an at-large berth to the Final Four. Although the Bruins were the No. 2 seed at the tournament, they weren’t depending on an at-large berth to get into the NCAA Tournament. Especially not when they had four games taken away from them as penalty for playing Wright.

So UCLA stormed through the tournament, soundly beating Pacific and Pepperdine in the first two rounds, and narrowly beating Cal 6-5 to take the MPSF title and the automatic berth to the Final Four.

There the team beat Navy in the semifinals, setting up a finals matchup against UC San Diego of the Western Water Polo Association.

At NCAA finals, Wright talked to the team before the game and stood on the sidelines to watch his team play. But after the game, while accepting the NCAA trophy, all the players pushed Wright forward to accept it, and made him hold the trophy for team pictures.

“I can’t be more proud as a captain of this team. I don’t like sitting on the bench and shaking the entire game, but I know this group of guys,” Wright said. “We are all best friends, and they would do anything for me, and I would do the same. None of the emotion shocked me.”

All in all, it was a bittersweet year for men’s water polo at UCLA. They showed the school and the world that they could overcome obstacles and still beat the competition.

“This is the craziest season I have ever been a part of,” Krikorian said.

“We have been through a lot as a team. It has been emotional and trying at times. We have stuck together through it all, and that is what is special about this team.”