Posted on: Friday, April 27, 2001
Elite women's water polo teams here for MPSF playoffs
By Ann Miller
Advertiser Staff Writer
In the next three days, the country's best female collegiate water polo players will be here for the 2001 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championships. That is more than can be said about the inaugural NCAA Women's Water Polo Championship.
The final four will be May 12-13 at Stanford. Sunday's MPSF winner will be there. So will the champions of the Collegiate Water Polo Association (12 teams from the East and Midwest) and Western Water Polo Association (15 smaller West Coast teams), and an at-large selection.
The at-large team will be from this weekend's 11-team MPSF Championships at the Duke Kahanamoku Aquatic Complex simply because the country's nine top-ranked teams are here.
"The final four championship will be outstanding," University of Hawai'i coach Shari Smart says. "But both our semifinals will be outstanding, along with the final. This is the best women's water polo tournament in the country."
The 20-7 Wahine have won their last seven. They are ranked fifth, but seeded sixth this weekend, and play 11th-seeded Pacific (6-19) today at 1 p.m. The winner gets an 8 p.m. match against third-seeded — and third-ranked — Southern California (26-3), which is on a 16-match winning streak.
Games begin at 10 this morning and 11 a.m. tomorrow and Sunday. The 17th and final game is scheduled for 6:30 Sunday night.
The Wahine probably won't be in it. They are 2-36 against Stanford, UCLA, USC and California — the true final four annually in this toddler sport — in their four-year history. Both wins came against USC. That's two more than nearly every other team on the water polo planet.
"Our goal is to beat the unbeatable," says Wahine senior captain Andrea Nishioka. Then she grins and admits avenging losses from earlier this season is a more realistic approach to Hawai'i's first home postseason.
"You've just got to play hard, and the best teams move on," says Nishioka, a two-time Academic All-American out of Roosevelt High. "Their level is just one step above ours. It makes kind of a big difference."
Stanford (23-0) is the MPSF's defending champion and first team to go through the regular season unbeaten. UCLA is seeded second and Cal, with two Olympians, fourth. The fab four are deeper and more talented than some Olympic teams.
Smart's approach is to stay in the moment, and keep her team with her. UH has never lost to UOP, and tamed the Tigers 11-1 last Saturday. That leaves UOP with nothing to lose and the Wahine vulnerable to distractions, particularly strike-induced academic pressure.
"The ramifications are way more than anyone anticipated," Smart says. "Their level of concentration and what's coming up in the next 10 days is really bad. Saturday and Sunday some of our players are supposed to be in class, which we never expected . . . we're at the end of the academic year . . . it's causing a very big distraction.
"We've got a lot of people who would rather be in the library."
There is little doubt they will cram for water polo this weekend.
SPLASH AND DASH: UH junior Christi Bardecki, who will graduate and give up her final year of eligibility, won the Most Outstanding and Susan Nishioka MVP Awards at Sunday's banquet. The first is voted by the team and the second by a committee. ... Others who received awards were: Eko Lapp (Outstanding Defensive Field Player), Mandy Foster and Sarah Shepard (Most Inspirational), Beth Novick (Most Improved), Andrea Nishioka (Leslie Kerfoot Award for Most Outstanding Local Player), and Lissy Schweitzer and Tracy Andersen (Coaches Awards for overall contributions). ... Half the team of 24 earned Akamai Awards for grade point averages of 3.0 or better. Bardecki, Nishioka and Stacy El-Hajj had perfect 4.0's. ... Sophomore Stephanie Hilo, a Kamehameha graduate, starts for Pacific. Other Hawai'i players competing this week include Kahuku's Janna Bills, a UC-Santa Barbara junior; Stanford freshman Emma O'Hanlon, a goalie out of Iolani; and UCLA's Maureen Flanagan, a sophomore out of Punahou.
