Tuesday, April 28, 1998
UCLA breezes through Western regionals
RECAP: UCSD, Stanford, Hawaii no rival for two-time
champions
By Steve Kim
Daily Bruin Staff
No surprise.
With the talent, training and preparation UCLA women’s water
polo team had, everyone knew this No. 1 ranked team would sweep the
Western regional tournament.
"It was a good, solid effort throughout the weekend – nothing
spectacular," said UCLA head coach Guy Baker in a bit of an
understatement.
Hosted at Stanford this year, the regional decided which team
from the West would be allowed to vie for the national championship
in two weeks. By winning the tournament, UCLA earned the No. 1 seed
at the national.
Friday’s preliminary was a breeze. Although the Bruins hadn’t
played UC Davis this year, it didn’t kept them from smashing Davis
16-2. UCSD wasn’t a factor, either, as the Bruins took over the
game 13-2.
The semifinal against the University of Hawaii on Saturday
offered a little more of a challenge. To everyone’s surprise, the
Rainbow Wahine kept the game at 0-0 in the first quarter and were
only trailing at 2-0 by the half.
But the intense training paid off for the Bruins, as they
finally kicked it into high-performance mode. They stole the game
by the end, with a score of 9-1.
The final game was played against the Stanford tournament hosts.
Home-court advantage didn’t help the Cardinal much; the Bruin
defense, headed by goalie and team captain Nicolle Payne, kept them
from scoring. Bruin defense only let the ball through once in the
first three quarters of the game.
Meanwhile, the Bruin offense did its share by scoring seven
points – three by Coralie Simmons and two each by Catharine von
Schwarz and Robin Beauregard. With 65 points to date, Simmons broke
her own school record of 60 for scoring the most points in a
season.
The Bruins took the regional tournament title with the win over
Stanford, 7-4. Their season record to date is 31-1, with the only
loss to Cal early in the season.
Beauregard, who’s been having an extraordinary freshman year,
performed well as both two-meter defender and offender.
"I got out of the pool earlier in the game, so coming back in
the late second quarter and being able to score two goals was
nice," Beauregard said. "It gave the team a spark."
Coming in as the No. 1 team helped a lot with their esteem, but
assistant coach Adam Krikorian stressed that a strong work ethic
plays a key role in each of their victories.
"We’ve always been a confident team, even after our loss to
Cal," he said. "We have faith in our abilities, but then again we
know how hard it is to win a game. You have to put in the work and
play hard in order to win. It’s never a walk in the park."
The regional tournament, which is set up the same way as the
national championship, allowed the Bruins to dip their toes in the
water before the big event two weeks away.
"It was good practice for the national," Payne said. "We always
take one game or tournament at a time. So now that the regional is
over, we finally get to concentrate on winning the
championship."
As the nationals approach, the two-time defending champions are
undoubtedly wanting a three-peat. Because the Bruins are in a
confident position, they need not make drastic improvements.
Instead, they will use the next two weeks to improve on little
things here and there.
"We know what we’ve got, we know what we can do," Baker said. "I
guess you would call it the final fine tuning. We’ll do that this
week, and next week, we’ll start getting rested and healthy for the
championship."
Beauregard added, "We’re going to work on our defensive and
offensive cohesiveness. Basically we’re putting together the last
pieces together and making sure that when we get to the final
games, everything pretty much works like a well-oiled machine.
"Our confidence is there but we’d still like to play a little
bit better," she continued. "Perfection isn’t really obtainable,
but we would like to get to it as closely as possible."
JAMIE SCANLON-JACOBS/Daily Bruin
Senior Nicole Payne plays at a previous home match.