{"id":253431,"date":"2017-04-30T10:30:19","date_gmt":"2017-04-30T17:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=253431"},"modified":"2017-04-30T12:18:34","modified_gmt":"2017-04-30T19:18:34","slug":"mpsf-tournament-central-catching-up-with-ucla-coach-brandon-brooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/mpsf-tournament-central-catching-up-with-ucla-coach-brandon-brooks\/","title":{"rendered":"MPSF Tournament Central: Catching Up With UCLA Coach Brandon Brooks"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michael Randazzo, Swimming World Contributor<\/em><\/p>\n

LOS ANGELES, CA. Arguably the sport\u2019s most successful program, the UCLA women\u2019s water polo team\u2014currently the nation\u2019s top team\u2014are built to win now. Featuring Olympians Rachel Fattal and Maddie Musselman<\/a> as well as four fifth-year seniors\u2014Fattal, Alys Williams, Kodi Hill and Alexa Tielman\u2014UCLA (21-1, 6-0 MPSF) has dropped a single match this season in their run to the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation’s (MPSF) Championship match.<\/p>\n

Yet it\u2019s possible that the Bruins are more impacted by their most recent failures\u2014two crushing loses to Stanford in the 2014 and 2015 NCAA Women\u2019s Tournament title games and a February loss to arch rival USC\u2014then their glorious past, including an NCAA record seven championships. Which is why UCLA head coach Brandon Brooks<\/strong> is emphatic that his players experience a season\u2019s full cycle to best prepare for the pitfalls that inevitably besiege even the most talented squads.<\/p>\n

Brooks, now in his eighth season in Westwood, is the best man for one of the most demanding jobs in U.S. women\u2019s polo. An assistant for then-head coach Adam Krikorian<\/strong> from 2007-2009, at the end of UCLA\u2019s run of five consecutive NCAA titles, he is acutely aware of the program\u2019s championship drought since he came on board in 2010. To win NCAAs this year, Brooks’ squad will have to fend off challenges by #2 Stanford and #3 University of Southern California in one of most talented years for American women’s varsity polo.<\/p>\n

During the MPSF Women\u2019s Tournament Swimming World<\/em> spoke with Coach Brooks at UCLA\u2019s Spieker Aquatics Center about his team’s development over a long season, the impact of Olympians\u2014including Fattal and Musselman\u2014on MPSF play in a post-Olympic year, and the challenge of working in an environment where national championships are expected every year.<\/p>\n

When the women\u2019s season opened last February attention was paid to USC\u2019s impressive win streak and the return of Maggie Steffens to then-#1 Stanford. Is it possible that the Bruins were an afterthought in the NCAA title picture?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s always interesting [to hear] the perspective of people outside of your program. Our outlook from the very beginning was we always thought we were neck and neck. We also returned two Olympians. We returned three other girls who were on the Olympic training squads. We have two girls that were also players\u2014I\u2019m gonna say \u201c14 and 15\u201d\u2014for the U.S. team and they only take 13. Kodi Hill and Alys Williams aren\u2019t technically Olympians but they went through all the training. They were good enough to be right there.<\/p>\n

Bronte Halligan is a freshman who was the last person cut for the Australian Olympic Team.<\/p>\n

Stanford definitely has talent and SC is a good team but internally I always thought that we were right there.<\/p>\n

We started off the season with a ton of enthusiasm and the results were really good. We looked good, we looked fast, we were talented. Going into the [Barbara Kalbus Invitational]\u2014a non-conference tournament\u2014the top 16 teams in the country duke it out early and see who\u2019s left standing.<\/p>\n

Up to that point we hadn\u2019t really been tested. We came out against a really talented SC team that hit us in the mouth We were definitely on our heels from the very beginning. We ended up losing the game and it definitely let us know that we\u2019re not invincible. There are other teams out there that work really hard and also have talent.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day what separates the national championship team from second and third place is very small details.<\/p>\n

That sent us on a path for almost the next month that was\u2026 interesting. We came out the next day after losing to USC and didn\u2019t play that well against a good Cal-Berkeley team. We squeaked out a win by one\u2014a win that we needed to get.\u00a0 In the end it left us humbled and hungry and a little bit pissed off.<\/p>\n

A big thing that we learned is that no matter how talented you are you have to go through the process. Just because it\u2019s a clich\u00e9 doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not true. We had to embrace showing up each day and trying to get better\u2014and not glance over things if we\u2019re not good at them.<\/p>\n

Even though we\u2019re number one and only have one loss I don\u2019t know that we\u2019re really ahead of any other teams. We came out on top on that given day [UCLA beat USC on April 22] but they\u2019re really good and essentially what happened to us six weeks ago is perhaps] the position that they\u2019re in. I\u2019m willing to bet that Stanford and SC are now pissed off.<\/p>\n

\"Mussleman_UCLA\"

Maddie Musselman. Photo Courtesy: UCLA Athletics<\/p><\/div>\n

You did add two gold medal winning Olympians to your roster\u2014Rachel Fattal, who\u2019s returning to Westwood as a fifth year senior and freshman sensation Maddie Musselman. How have these two in particular impacted your team\u2019s play this season.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Maddie has been fantastic. She\u2019s got a great arm! She gets a great jump on the counterattack\u2026 she\u2019s a very, very talented player. There\u2019s a reason she\u2019s an Olympic gold medalist.<\/p>\n

For Rachel, coming off the Olympics and coming back to UCLA every day you can see that she doesn\u2019t have a national championship. And the girls at Stanford do. And the girls at SC do. She\u2019s been driven all year to put us in position. Her intensity, passion, energy\u2014it\u2019s been a real driving force for us.<\/p>\n

I have four fifth-year seniors, which is strange. Rachel and Kodi are 23 years old. It puts a bigger distance between them and the freshmen.<\/p>\n

With the returning Olympians, they\u2019ve had challenges themselves. You come back and you\u2019re part of this really special experience\u2014a gold-medal winning team\u201413 of the best players in the world. And you come back to a college environment. I didn\u2019t see them let up because this is not the Olympics. But I do think that no matter how good that team was on an international level, there\u2019s no way to get through the process.<\/p>\n

Their roles are different than they were with the U.S. team; they\u2019re more vocal leaders and more relied upon to be the driving force as opposed to what their role was with [Team USA]. Maddie\u2019s one of the youngest on the team so she\u2019s doing what other people tell her to do or taking advantage of openings that other people create. And she\u2019s great at that.<\/p>\n

But now she\u2019s got to be a little more demanding, a little bit more aggressive, which has taken some time to adapt to.<\/p>\n

Are Rachel Fattal and your other seniors the potential \u201cX factor\u201d that separates the Bruins from other national title contenders?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"fatall-left-apr-17\"

Rachal Fattal. Photo Courtesy: UCLA Athletics<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s actually been huge. It allows me to place more trust in them and more freedom and I think that makes things a little bit more enjoyable for them. Teams are so much stronger when they\u2019re making the choices themselves. Are you buying in as opposed to just under the coach\u2019s thumb? That\u2019s what really makes a great team. And Rachel is right at the center of all of that.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s pulling people aside\u2014there\u2019s days when she might even do more coaching than I do. She\u2019s talking to people in groups, she is a great communicator in the water. She\u2019s got great vision, she matches up on the other team\u2019s best attacker. There\u2019s Maggie Steffens at Stanford who\u2019s arguably the best player in the world, and someone\u2019s got to guard her. We have some people that\u2014I\u2019m not going to say they shut her down, but they make life difficult [for her].<\/p>\n

Rachel\u2019s been fantastic, and I can appreciate the growth in her maturity since she came here. I\u2019ve seen her since she\u2019s 16 and now she\u2019s 23.<\/p>\n

There are a slew of Olympians playing in the U.S. this year\u2014and seven are at UCLA this weekend for the MPSF tournament. How has that impacted conference play this season?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was listening to a rebroadcast<\/a> the other day of Adam Krikorian\u2014he was the color guy for our game against SC. Before me he was the coach here, and he\u2019s been involved in the game since 1995, and now he\u2019s the national team coach. So he’s seen all the international teams.<\/p>\n

He said that it\u2019s very possible that this is the most talented year in the college game that he\u2019s seen since he\u2019s been a part [of women\u2019s polo].<\/p>\n

Arguably the U.S. women\u2019s college game is the best in the world. We recruit the two or three best girls from every one\u2019s national team and put them on teams together. And you do get the fun of the college rivalry aspect of things.<\/p>\n

What people appreciate about the college game in general is that people play so passionately. They\u2019re playing for school pride, and to get that to all come together is really cool.<\/p>\n

Have the Olympics affected this year\u2019s [college] game? Yes, you get a lot of people who are a year older at this point after taking off a year to train, so they\u2019re at the top of their game. That\u2019s where you see the level of play improve altogether because it\u2019s not just that those players who are great, but how do those players train to be good?<\/p>\n

The games that you guys see on Saturday and Sunday are excellent but they are the end result of a lot of practice.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s Ashleigh Johnson on the East Coast who\u2019s creating a whole other impact to the sport.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure there are players on teams competing against her that spent a whole lot of time [practicing] shooting this year. They\u2019re trying to beat Ashleigh Johnson. Her presence is pushing other people harder.<\/p>\n

I have 28 girls this year\u2014that\u2019s the biggest team I\u2019ve ever had\u2014and players 13-25 are getting better being around these Olympians.<\/p>\n

This is UCLA, which has more NCAA championships than any other athletics program in America. The Bruins are expected to win. Does your team have a window to win now? How much do you feel that pressure to succeed?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I do believe that this is a team meant to win it now. But I feel that every year. On the other hand that\u2019s part of the lesson that we learned back in February: you\u2019ve just got to go through the process.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve talked about it with my team: enjoy the work with the understanding that if you put in as much work to be the best that you can, the chips will fall where they may.<\/p>\n

I felt that early in the year we were really focused on just winning the championship, putting in the work to have a chance for that. Obviously I hope that we do win. We’re going to put everything we can into having that chance.<\/p>\n

Until then we\u2019re going to show up each day and enjoy each other and the process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michael Randazzo, Swimming World Contributor LOS ANGELES, CA. Arguably the sport\u2019s most successful program, the UCLA women\u2019s water polo team\u2014currently the nation\u2019s top team\u2014are built to win now. Featuring<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4875,"featured_media":253433,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[3384,61254,39795,4368,61256,61255,57766,58093,39337,60192,32490,60862,60863,61126],"class_list":["post-253431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-water-polo","tag-adam-krikorian","tag-alys-williams","tag-ashleigh-johnson","tag-brandon-brooks","tag-bronte-halligan","tag-kodi-hill-and-alexa-tielman","tag-mackenzie-fischer","tag-maddie-mussleman","tag-maggie-steffens","tag-michael-randazzo","tag-rachel-fattal","tag-stanford-womens-water-polo","tag-ucla-womens-water-polo","tag-usc-womens-water-polo"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\nMPSF Tournament Central: Catching Up With UCLA Coach Brandon Brooks - Swimming World<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Arguably the sport\u2019s most successful program, #1 UCLA women\u2019s water polo team are built to win now. 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