We’ll spare you the trip to Google, as we cue the addicting “Jeopardy” theme now running through your head and give you the answer to the question right here. You won’t even need the 30 seconds contestants in the game-show crucible get for Final Jeopardy.
“What was Cal State Fullerton 10, Pomona-Pitzer 8?” And with that, you know the question to the answer: “This represents Cal State Fullerton’s first men’s water polo victory in nearly 30 years.”
And while Kyle Witt knew the Titans would eventually break through — even with an opening weekend schedule featuring the likes of top-ranked and two-time defending national champion Cal, No. 3 UCLA and No. 20 Navy — he lost exactly zero sleep and exerted exactly zero beads of sweat pondering when that would happen.
It would happen. And, more importantly, it would happen on Witt’s terms.
This is what keeps Witt traipsing merrily along on his endless conga line of chaos building the Titans’ men’s and women’s water polo teams from scratch. He did it in the spring with the women’s team, creating a team out of thin air that went a respectable 11-20.
And now, it’s the men’s turn. Witt spent more than a year recruiting the 21 players making up this year’s first Titans’ team since 1985. He scoured the state’s community college rosters, using the entire state as his base. That meant going north to find players at West Valley College in Saratoga and Modesto Junior College, then going south, where Witt uncovered players from Riverside City College, Saddleback College, Golden West College, Mt. San Antonio College and Rio Hondo College, among others.
Of the Titans’ initial 21 players, 16 came from the JC ranks. This is intentional on several fronts that, on the surface, gives Witt those pesky unintended consequences regarding Orange County’s reputation as a water polo mecca. While it’s true that Division I water polo players grow on OC palm trees, it’s also true that their expectations — or, more accurately, their parents’ expectations — grow on trees the height of redwoods.
“The reality of today’s boys high school water polo players is that most of them here are at private schools, where their parents pay a lot of money to send them to those schools,” Witt said. “The biggest problem is their parents have no problem paying to send them to a Loyola Marymount instead of a Cal State Fullerton. The parents look down on the Cal States. Long Beach State, which is nationally ranked, can’t even get these kids.
“That’s why you have to recruit far and wide to find diamonds in the rough. We think we’ve found that in our five high school kids.”
The corollary to that means Witt also knew hitting the JC schools hard would uncover diamonds of a different brilliance. He knew JC players would immediately take to a fledgling program that — above all—would give them something more established programs never would.
A chance.
“You can look all these players in the eye and tell them this is a unique situation, that we will have successes and failures in your time here, but you will have successes nobody else will believe,” he said. “They wanted someone to look them in the eye and tell them the truth. Those are the leaders I want, and that’s the type of program we will have. They want a chance, and they don’t want the BS they’ve dealt with before.
“The overriding theme is these guys wanted a chance and they got lost a little bit, whether it was from COVID or them getting lost themselves or coaches not believing they can help their programs. When JC players are recruited, coaches string them along. Once a high school player commits, they drop the JC guy. It’s a long wait for these guys, and it’s not a fun process.”
This is where Witt’s conga line plays a wonderful tune that is music to their ears. He told JC standouts like West Valley’s Togan Ozbek, Golden West’s Nico D’Angelo and Mt. San Antonio College’s Zach Ewing — who combined for seven of the 10 goals scored against Pomona-Pitzer — they would have an immediate role building something special. Witt’s zero-BS approach and deep knowledge of JC players, one learned at the pool deck of longtime Loyola Marymount coach and mentor John Loughran, made that always-important recruiting element easier.
There was another byproduct of that. When you recruit players like D’Angelo, who Witt said will make a great coach one day due to his water polo IQ and ability to play 3D chess seeing the entire pool, and Ozbek, who will be the Titans’ primary sniper due to his ability to get open and find shooting lanes, you get more than buying the water polo version of Amazon stock at $7.
You get players who immediately buy into what you’re selling because you believe in their ability to grow, learn and improve as players and people. They understand your first lesson that you don’t have to take 100 shots a game to be successful. They learn that you can make the extra pass and you don’t have to make the eye-catching, how-did-he-do-that move every time you touch the ball.
And they learn Witt is playing the long game with them. Not just in the pool, with his defensive-minded, relentless counterattacking style that Witt said will eventually make the Titans impose their will on their opponents.
All well and good. But Witt’s long game goes beyond the pool. Way beyond the pool. And by “long game,” he means longer than any of these players comprehend at this point in their careers. These players may have only met each other on Aug. 5, when practices began. Some arrived even later than that, which is what makes going 1-3 in last weekend’s opening tournament at the Triton Invitational at UC San Diego even more impressive in the big picture.
Not that Witt cares about outcomes right now. The long game is more than trivia — or trivial.
“We tried to make sure we were bringing in the right people. That’s all that matters the first year,” Witt said. “I don’t think anyone will look back 20 years from now and say, ‘You only won five games, or what have you.’ It will be, ‘You guys helped build something, and upon your shoulders stands the success of the Cal State Fullerton water polo program.’ That takes broad shoulders and we think we have those broad shoulders on this team.
“We won’t have any all-conference players, but we have good players. We have talent, we’re good, but compared to our Big West opponents who are nationally ranked, we’re behind. And that’s OK.”
The long game means you take small victories where and when you find them. Because small victories eventually morph into bigger ones.
“The other day, we found a microwave and put it in my office,” Witt said, in a proud, unironic, matter-of-fact voice. “If you visited my office, you’d see boxes not unpacked from when I came here from LMU. My to-do list is 100 things long. But you can look at it and freak out, or you can accept the fact that I got things done today and I’m excited to get back.
“This is why I wanted this job. We just have to keep building this thing.”
