Patrick Woepse Foundation Swim Honors Life of UCLA Water Polo Star
By Alex Ellison
On a cool August morning in Newport Beach, California, the local community gathered at the 34th Street Pier to take part in the first Patrick Woepse Foundation swim. The event followed Pat’s daily ritual: swimming from the shore to the pier and back again. The new event, however, was meant to honor the water polo star’s life and raise awareness about NUT carcinoma and other rare cancers.
Woepse played water polo for UCLA from 2012-16 under head coach Adam Wright and was a key member of the Bruins’ back-to-back NCAA Championship title wins in 2014 and 2015. The Tustin native also received the Bruin Leadership Award and the Pac-12 Leadership Award in 2016 for the character he demonstrated and the impact he had on those around him. On September 17, 2023, he was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive lung cancer called NUT carcinoma. He fought it for 13 months until his death on October 10, 2024 at age 31.
NUT carcinoma involves a gene called NUTm1 and is so rare that there are very few treatment options. The fast-growing cancer arises in cells that line the organs of the body when a NUTm1 gene mistakenly fuses with another gene and the new gene grows uncontrollably. There are an estimated 1,400 new cases annually in the United States, but only 40-50 of those cases are diagnosed every year. Most cases are found in adolescents and young adults.
After Woepse’s passing, his wife, Maddie Musselman, a three-time Olympian and fellow UCLA alum, learned more about NUT carcinoma research and the doctors dedicated to studying it, and now the Foundation’s mission is aimed toward awareness and research.
“I have already met a lot of people who have unfortunately had [NUT carcinoma] or lost someone from this cancer,” she said. “They love what we’re doing and want to be a part of it, so I know this is going to make a difference.”
Courtesy: Maddie Woepse
During the past year, Musselman connected with scientists at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston where NUT carcinoma was first identified and where Woepse participated in a clinical trial during his treatment. She also met with teams at Stanford’s Crabtree Lab and the University of North Carolina’s Immunotherapy Research Lab. Together with three other family foundations, the Patrick Woepse Foundation (founded in 2003) now forms part of the NUT Carcinoma Alliance which helps direct donations to these labs. One day, Musselman hopes to help create an international NUT Carcinoma Symposium where researchers worldwide can share their progress and insights with each other.
The idea, she said, is to “open up collaboration and a teamwork aspect in order to help find a cure and find a treatment. It’s not a competition; it’s how can we work together to figure this out?”
As for the swim, the mission was to simply follow Pat’s own routine. When pools were closed during the pandemic, Woepse, his longtime friend Paul Reynolds, and a few other locals began swimming in the ocean off 34th Street Pier. Woepse found solace and challenge in the open water and what had begun as a way to stay active quickly became his passion. He would often rise at 6 a.m. to swim before work – which initially “appalled” his wife, she said, but now, the emotions and memories the swim evokes make her cherish the event deeply.
At the inaugural swim at Newport Beach in August, Reynolds told participants how Woepse’s identity had become closely tied to that stretch of the ocean.
“The reason I started this swim is not only because it honors Pat’s life and what he loved to do,” Reynolds said, “but also because it really symbolizes a cancer fight in a lot of ways. The mindset [required] to swim like that really translated into Pat’s ability to fight as long as he did against this cancer. This event embodies everything about the foundation in terms of doing something that is physically and mentally difficult.”
The man and woman who reached the shore first in the inaugural event, Ryder Dodd and Rachel Fattal, each had ties to Woepse and Musselman via UCLA and/or Team USA. Fattal played water polo for the Bruins from 2013-17, crossing paths with Woepse from 2013-15, and was Musselman’s US Olympic teammate three times, including gold medal victories in 2016 and 2020. Dodd plays for UCLA currently. He, like Musselman, competed in the 2024 Paris Games where he helped the US men claim bronze.
“Rachel does such a great job of honoring his legacy,” Musselman said. “To see her go out there and swim really fast and swim for me was really inspiring. Ryder obviously did not get to play with Pat but those two remind me of him in a lot of ways and I think they are inspired by him in a lot of ways.”
After a successful first edition, the 34th Street Pier swim will now become an annual tradition. In the end, it’s not just a fundraiser or a memorial; it’s an opportunity to remember Woepse’s motto, “We can do hard things.”