The 2010 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation preseason poll ranked the Pepperdine men’s water polo team ninth in conference heading into their fall 2010 season. This is a small step down from the No. 2 national ranking the Waves earned just two seasons ago but impressive nonetheless.
In the past five years under the guidance of Head Coach Jack Kocur the men’s water polo program has won a national title and eight conference crowns and is looking to continue these successes this season.
Last November Pepperdine finished with an overall record of 13-12 placing them above .500 and making 2009 its third consecutive winning season and ninth winning season over the previous decade.
In a program that lists Olympians Terry Schroeder Merrill Moses and Jesse Smith among its notable alumni there are high expectations for success. This season will be different for the men’s team who lost several of their key players including five of their top scorers. But coach Kocur is expecting a breakout season from all of his sophomores as well as from the newcomers.
Kocur and assistant coach Gary O’Brien also brought in four junior college transfers and seven freshmen for the upcoming season. Nathan Castillo and Rex Learmouth who led Golden West to consecutive state championships in 2008 and 2009 are two of these four transfers. The other two transfers are Brandon Picone and Aaron Turk.
Kocur is excited about the team prospects: “We are very excited about all the incoming guys he said. We want to emphasize the later part of the season because we have so many new guys coming in this year it’s going to take some time to getting used to playing together… but I feel pretty good about the month of October and the month of November.”
Freshman Kolby Krystofik has been training with Pepperdine since January because of his early graduation in December 2009. Krystofik has a strong history with water polo having been involved with the USA National Water Polo Cadet and Junior teams from 2006 though 2009.
Another addition to the team is freshman Hungarian goalkeeper Bence Valics. Valics hadn’t practiced with the team until fairly recently but he brings with him several years of national team experience in which he has won three junior championships as well as a pair of Hungarian U22 titles.
Besides Valic there are two other goalkeepers on the roster. Former sophomore goalkeeper Colin Carrol has taken a field position as an attacker leaving the goalkeeper position between sophomore Mather Carter senior Bryce McLain and Valic.
Because of the recent graduates and many new additions the team is doing a lot of rebuilding. Junior attacker Travis Goff says that a lot of the preseason workout is not concerned so much with conditioning as it is with working on team chemistry.
“Practices are pretty brutal as far as hours a day [because] we have a lot to do to try to get the new guys up to the same level as the upperclassmen who have been around and know how everything works Goff said. That’s going to be one of the hardest things to accomplish before the season.”
Goff also said he can see the team making it into the top five possibly even the top three this season. Their first game is Saturday Sept. 4 at UC Santa Barbara. The time is to be determined.