BRIDGET O’BRIEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Senior offensive
water polo player Dave Parker brings a
light-hearted attitude to the top-ranked Bruins squad.
By Rekha Rao
Daily Bruin Contributor
Dave Parker has definitely made the most of his time as a
Bruin.
And if you ask his water polo teammates, the light-hearted
senior does it with a style all his own.
“He is the nicest person you will ever meet, and the
funniest,” said head coach Adam Krikorian.
His teammates agree that Parker is an individual.
“Dave is the most unique man I have ever met in my life.
He has more character than anyone I know,” said sophomore
Matt Flesher.
He has made nicknames for everybody on the team, including
“B-Dubs” for senior Brian Brown. He has an obsession
with Elvis Presley and has been known to belt out songs by the King
during practice. And he watches children’s shows.
“Well, there is an opening for a new Mr. Rogers,” he
said when asked what he wanted to do after graduation. “I
really like Sesame Street.”
But despite his unique character out of the pool, Parker is all
business when it comes to water polo.
Last year he won a national championship with the currently
top-ranked men’s water polo team, and appears well on track
toward doing it again.
“We all worked so hard to win that championship. It was
great,” Parker said. “We plan on doing that again this
year.”
Parker got his start at Miramonte High School in Orinda, where
he was a basketball and baseball star.
Wait a minute … doesn’t he play water polo?
Sure he does. Only after he tore his ACL and meniscus. Playing
the sport for fun while he waited for basketball season to start
again, the two-meter man got his start as a goalie.
“(Basketball and water polo) both were really fun and kind
of similar because both are very big on ball handling,”
Parker said. “But water polo is a little more interactive
because you are outdoors and in the sun.”
Parker’s water polo prowess resulted in offers from local
schools Stanford and Cal, but he picked UCLA because he was ready
to try something new.
It was not water polo, however, that Parker played when he first
came to the Westwood campus. He had his sights set on playing the
sport the school is famous for ““ basketball.
“(Bruin football player) Drew Bennett and I were going to
try out for the basketball team together,” he said. “We
went to talk to Steve Lavin at the time and I ended up playing
basketball the entire year.”
Basketball had always been part of his life, but playing for
UCLA was a new experience.
“Basketball is a much more high-profile sport than water
polo,” Parker said. “When we traveled to the NCAA
Championship games, we had first class seats on planes and ate
shrimp cocktail. It was a fun year.”
The next year Parker redshirted for water polo and played in
nine games, but it was hard for him to choose between the two
sports. The basketball team was inviting to Parker, but in the end
he chose water polo because of his teammates.
“I knew a lot of the water polo team better than the
basketball team,” Parker said. “Even after the games
and practices we’d hang out together. It was more like a
family camaraderie.”
The team gave him companionship, but Parker had something for
them in return: two years of junior national team experience in
Cuba and Europe. But his European trip the summer after his
freshman year, however, was cut short, when Parker caught
mononucleosis.
“I still wanted to play, but my body just couldn’t
do it,” Parker said.
Although he saw a great deal of playing time during his first
and second years of water polo, Parker believed that he
didn’t play up to his full potential.
“I was still battling mono and I don’t think I was
focused. I couldn’t balance my schedule, and I was having so
much fun my freshman year and it became too much,” he
said.
His coach noticed that Parker needed work his first year.
“He struggled during his early years, but he has come such
a long way from being a freshman,” Krikorian said.
As Krikorian said, he has matured, learning to balance his
schedule with his social life. It all culminated into an incredible
junior year for Dave Parker, one that resulted in the NCAA
Championship for the Bruins.
This year, led by seniors Sean Kern and Adam Wright in addition
to Parker, the team is aiming to defend its title.
“If we keep working hard, we have the potential to do it
again,” Parker said.
One day, Parker wants to become a pediatrician or open his own
business.
“Parker Enterprises sounds really nice to me,” he
said.
But pediatrics and business have to wait. Because first comes
water polo. And after graduation, Parker plans on becoming the next
Mr. Rogers.