SHUHEI MATSUO
Sports EDITOR
Raleigh Gissell dove into the ash-covered poolto try to clean it out in the morning of Sunday, Oct. 21.
Gissell, manager of Raleigh Runnels Memorial Pool, was one of many people involved with Pepperdine athletics affected by the Malibu Canyon Fire. Still, they knew their efforts would not be enough to salvage some of last week’s home matches.
Despite Gissell’s effort, the men’s water polo game against Cal was canceled that day,
forcing the Waves to play the Golden Bears at Berkeley this past Friday, which replaced the originally scheduled match against UC Davis.
“It’s extremely important to have your home games,” said Jack Kocur, head coach of the Pepperdine men’s water polo team, “because you are in front of your home crowds and get the spirit, you know, just the home-team advantage.”
After losing its home-pool advantage, the water polo team lost to the No.-2 Golden Bears despite its solid performance. The Waves also failed to take down Stanford on Sunday. However, Kocur takes this experience positively.
“I feel like it was a good character builder for us to play them at their place and get familiar with the area and the fans,” he said, “because we’ve got to go out there for the Mountain Pacific this year.”
After canceling Sunday’s match and Monday’s practice, the water polo team resumed practicing at Oaks Christian High School in Westlake Village on Tuesday night.
“[The fire] definitely affected the preparation for [the weekend’s action] because we couldn’t practice,” redshirt junior attacker Adam Hewko said. “But I think we still could have won those games.”
While the fire changed the water polo team’s schedule, it didn’t affect the women’s swimming and diving team’s home meet Saturday.
Nick Rodionoff, head coach of the swimming and diving team, used an analogy to describe the situation of hosting the only home meet of the fall season after not being able to practice for a few of days.
“It’s like being in a car wreck, and you didn’t get hurt. But you got traumatized,” he said. “You are not quite sure where you are, and you are not quite sure what you are thinking, you know. It’s hard to focus.”
Despite the traumatic event that prevented the team from practicing until Thursday, members of the team showed impressive performances, including 22 career best times.
“I think we really needed the meet to get us back in like, ‘OK, this is important. The fire is gone so let’s reorganize,’” Rodionoff said.
Water sports were not the only ones that were influenced by the wildfire. Earlier last week, host Pepperdine had to change the location for the men’s tennis’ ITA Region VIII singles tournament for the last two matches. Monday’s semifinal was moved to University of Southern California, and Tuesday’s final match was played at UCLA.
While Pepperdine senior tennis player Andre Begemann, winner of this tournament, had much playing time competing off campus, other members on the team were not able to practice in Malibu due to the heavy smoke.
“It affected our practice schedule,” head coach Adam Steinberg said. “We couldn’t practice on campus because the air quality was tough.”
Whether a team succeeded in its competition this past week, none of the coaches or players related their performances to the wildfire.
“Was the training difficult? Yeah, it was difficult,” Kocur said. “But I don’t think we can use it as a crutch to say that was the reason that we went 0-2. We went 0-2 because we didn’t play to our capabilities. It was nothing to do with the fire or the environment change.”
11-01-2007
