The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 480

U4 SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2000 LOS ANGELES TIMES SYDNEY 2000 mSS SUMMER OLYMPICS JcW --V- rl Americans' Defeat Is a Tear-jerker U.S. Gets Lesson From Yugoslavia By HELENE ELLIOTT TIMES STAFF WRITER SYDNEY, Australia When he marched in the opening ceremony, 18-year-old U.S. water polo driver Tony Azevedo couldn't help but be awed. '1 "It was like, 'Oh, my God, I'm here. I'm talking to Marion Jones and Lindsay Davenport is sitting next to said Azevedo, a graduate of Long Beach Wilson High and one of the youngest players in the water polo tournament.

"It was kind of a shock. But we had 11 days to sort IJLT I IIIMMMMf-'-- PAUL MORSE Los Angeles Times U.S. Coach Guy Baker consoles his players after they lost to Australia in the last two seconds. MEDAL WINNERS G0U States Russia By HELENE ELLIOTT TIMES STAFF WRITER SYDNEY, Australia Their tears mixed with the chlorinated water that still glistened on their bodies. Stunned by the abrupt ending of their gold-medal dreams in a dramatic 4-3 loss to Australia on Saturday, members of the U.S.

women's water polo team tried to savor winning a silver medal and not mourn how close they came to becoming the sport's first Olympic champion. "We've all cried in the last half-hour," Coach Guy Baker said after his players had accepted their medals but before they had accepted the harsh reality of their loss. "We've all had our moments. It's something that's true in all sports. If you aren't successful, no matter how well you play, there's still tremendous pain." Their turn from joyful anticipation to hollow disbelief was almost too swift to comprehend.

Buoyed by a tying extra-man goal from Brenda Villa with 13 seconds to play that silenced the many Aussie fans among the crowd of 17,000 at the Sydney International Aquatic Center, the U.S. players happily anticipated going to overtime. "We called time out and scored, and we were all focused and ready," Villa said. "I was really excited and happy. We just needed to play a few more seconds of defense, and we have a great defensive team." As the clock ticked toward zero, a foul was called against U.S.

driver Julie Swail. An apparent Australia goal was disallowed, and Swail was sent off for being too close to the shooter. Still in possession of the ball, Australia's Simone Hankin set it for an unguarded Yvette Higgins with 1.3 seconds left; Higgins' left-handed shot deflected off U.S. player Coralie Simmons before eluding goalkeeper Bernice Orwig, drawing roars from the partisan crowd but leaving the U.S. contingent frustrated and dejected.

Orwig, whose stellar work in goal blunted a persistent Australian attack, cried at Vo.e postgame news conference and was too distraught to speak. Maureen O'Toole, the 39-year-old water polo pioneer who on Saturday played the final game of a distinguished career, only barely maintained her composure after what she considered a bad call. "I wouldn't change anything, except for the last game. I'd love to change that," said O'Toole, who plans to retire. "I'm sure in a few weeks or months I'll be able to forget about it and put a smile on my face." But not Saturday.

"It's pretty disappointing and painful to lose like that in the last second," she said. Villa was unsure of what happened, but said she thought Higgins couldn't take a direct shot from beyond the seven-meter barrier and should have had to pass. Other players said Higgins things out. We're not here to meet all these people we're here to rock and roll." So far, it has been more rock than roll for the U.S. men.

Yugoslavia, a longtime and frequent training partner of the U.S. team, showed its old friends no mercy today. Driver Aleksandr Sapic scored four goals, the first with an extra man 1:36 into the game, and driver Danilo Ikodinovic added two as Yugoslavia overpowered the U.S., 8-5, at the Ryde Aquatic Center and dropped the U.S. to 0-2 in Group preliminary-round play. Azevedo, considered one of the best young players in the world, cut his team's deficit to 4-3 with an extra-man goal with 4:28 to play in the second period, but Sapic rebuilt a two-goal lead for Yugoslavia with a hard shot inside the left post 2.9 seconds before the end of the second quarter.

Gavin Arroyo's extra-man goal with 5:46 left in the third quarter kept the U.S. close, but Yugoslavia had plenty in reserve. A hard, bouncing goal by Ikodinovic with three minutes to play in the third quarter gave Yugoslavia a 6-4 lead, and a bouncer past U.S. goalkeeper Dan Hackett and inside the far post by Sapic, with the extra man, with 8.7 seconds before the buzzer put Yugoslavia (2-0) too far ahead for the U.S. to overtake.

U.S. Coach John Vargas saw some improvement from his team's tournament-opening 10-7 loss to Croatia, and he chose to build on that positive note instead of reflecting on his team's shortcomings against Yugoslavia. Against Croatia, the U.S. defense was remarkably porous in the early going and allowed Croatia to take a big lead early; Wolf Wigo had three goals in that game and three-time Olympian Chris Humbert scored the last two, making the final score somewhat less painful. The U.S.

left fewer opponents open for uncontested shots today, but Yugoslavia prevailed nonetheless. "I thought we played a lot better today, but we've got to clean up our six-on-five situations," Vargas said, referring to the U.S. team's 3-for-9 performance on power plays. "That's not going to get it done. "If we play Monday with the fight and go-for-it that we showed today, we're in this thing.

People say we started off with tough teams, in Yugoslavia and Croatia, and that we're in a tough group. But I think it's good for us. It makes us tournament-tough. This is a touffh tournament, and this is going to help us when we gei clover play." There can be a fine line between tournament-toughened ami bruised. But Azevedo, for one, isn't daunted.

"The U.S., we always play better toward the end of he said. "We started slow against Croatia, and today we played so much better. We can only go up." Slow starts are nothing new for the U.S. men in the Olympics. They also lost their opener at Atlanta in 1996, a 10-7 loss to Italy, but won four straight before losing to Spain.

They finished seventh. fantastic for them to get a goal in that situation," Baker said. "A lot was going on there, as far as where the free throw was. We were a little confused, which is unfortunate." The ending eclipsed the marvelous tension created by two tenacious, talented teams playing a physical but not dirty game. Villa gave the U.S.

the lead with 2:57 left in the first quarter on an extra-man goal from deep on the left side, but Australia matched that 57 seconds later on a bouncing extra-man goal by lefthander Melissa Mills. Driver Ericka Lorenz put the U.S. ahead again with 2:54 to go in the second quarter, but Australia driver Bronwyn Mayer matched that 42 seconds into the third quarter during a six-on-five situation. Superb goalkeeping by Orwig and Australia's Liz kept the game even until Australia's Naomi Castle stored during another six-on-five advantage, with 1 :50 left in the fourth quarter. When Villa brought the U.S.

even again, its hopes soared. "I felt like nobody really deserved to lose this game," O'Toole said. The U.S. didn't lose, at least in the eyes of the Australians. "Guy is the most beautiful coach.

The game was a fair game," said Gorgenyi, who was pulled into the pool by his players during their postgame celebrations. "It was a great tactical battle." Said Weekes, who was active in the campaign to add the sport to the Olympic program: "It's a fantastic start for women's water polo in Olympic history. I'm just so happy to be part of it. Hopefully, every young woman is going to want to grow up and be a water polo player." And when time gives them perspective and distance, the U.S. players will cherish the memory of being part of a first, of something special.

"We're glad to be here. A lot of people didn't think we'd get this far," Villa said. "It was fun until the last second." made several pump fakes before shooting and couldn't have gotten a shot off before time expired, and that she illegally moved forward. "I was up there. I would have been in a slightly different position if I knew it was live," Villa said.

"Her teammate went in there and threw it out to her. We were set for her to get the ball and get it into play. That's why we left her alone." Said Higgins: "I was telling Simone Hankin to hurry and give me the ball before the Americans were ready. I just shot because we only had a second left. I didn't know what to do.

I thought, 'Oh, everybody's jumping up in the air. We won! We won! I'll jump in the air Gianni Lonzi, chairman of the technical water polo commission of FINA the sport's governing body said in a statement the call was correct. In addition, assessors assigned to judge the performance of referees Renato Dani of Italy and Vladimir Prikhodko of Kazakhstan supported the call. Baker approached the referees but insisted he merely told them, "Good game," and didn't argue with them. "I'm still going to keep coaching," he said wryly.

But he was quick to credit Australia and Coach Istvan Gorgenyi, a Hungarian hired to bring Australia's women's program to prominence and win gold in its home pool. "I thought Australia was great. I thought it was LOOKING AHEAD WOMEN'S SPRINGBOARD DIVING 2 A.M. PDT WEDNESDAY; TV: WEDNESDAY, 7 P. I DN I GHT, CHANNEL 4 McCormick Was as Gold as It Gets; Now It's Fu's Turn By BILL DWYRE TIMES SPORTS EDITOR SYDNEY, Australia The most famous, most successful women's diver in the history of the Olympics will find a nice, comfortable spot on her couch in Seal Beach Thursday night and hope that NBC shows something very close to her heart.

It will be the pursuit of Pat McCormick's Olympic record, something that has stood since the moment she hit the water in late November 1956, in Melbourne. When she hit her final forward 2V4 off the platform perfectly that day, in as dramatic a diving competition as there has been in the Games, it brought the woman from the poor side of the tracks a fourth gold medal, an achievement yet to be topped in her sport. if At if Or even equaled. That was expected to change in Sydney, when China's Fu Mingxia, with gold medals to her credit in platform and vl snrineboard in Atlanta and Dlatform in know how hard she has worked. When I was doing it, it was pretty much all I focused on for 15 years of my life." Just because 44 years have passed since she made her last Olympic trip up the diving ladder, McCormick still remembers the work and sacrifice it takes.

She got her start as a ragamuffin from Seal Beach, who was raised mostly by her mother, when her alcoholic father did not provide support, and somehow found her way to the Los Angeles Athletic Club, where the two greatest swimmers in the world just happened to be training. "I don't know why, but I just loved to swim," she said. "My mother used to read tea leaves so she could get me a dollar to take the old Red Line trolley car to meets and downtown to the athletic club. "I remember riding that trolley and being so hungry I could cry, but not having any money for food. I remember, when I was in little meets, my brother used to go along and give pennies to some of the kids in the stands to clap for me." One day, after being just one of the kids swimming and fooling around with diving at the L.A.

Athletic Club, McCormick was stopped by a coach named Eileen Allen and asked to join a group on the sixth floor. "I went up there, and there were Sammy Lee and Vicki Draves," McCormick said. "I didn't even know the Olympics existed." Nor did she know that each of her soon-to-be newest friends had won gold medals in the London Olympics in 1948. Draves had become the first woman to win two golds in Olympic diving, a record that would stand until McCormick broke it. Once McCormick got to know Lee and Draves and what they had done, she was hooked.

"That's all I thought about, all I wanted to do," she said. "I didn't think about winning at an Olympics. I just wanted to she went, she won. In Helsinki in 1952, as a wide-eyed newcomer, she took both the platform and springboard golds. "That first Olympics, just going, is like your first kiss," she said.

"I was so young. I remember Sammy Lee sitting around the deck with me, and guys like Bob Mathias and even Jesse Owens would come by and sit around. "I really didn't understand what was going on, but it was right after the was a sign that I could proceed with my life. I could finish school, be a wife." McCormick eventually had another child, Kelly, who took a silver medal in women's diving in Los Angeles in '84 and a bronze in Seoul four years later. She and her husband eventually split up, but her Olympic connection served her well years later, when she was asked to make a speech at La Puente High before the '84 Olympics.

"I spoke about education and the need to graduate," she said. "Afterward, a teacher came up to me and said that she had 100 kids who wouldn't make it, who were on an F-minus level. I told her to give me 25 of them and I'd go to work." That was the beginning of the Pat McCormick Foundation, which is alive and well and funding programs for at-risk children. "We take them in first and second grade and follow them all the way through," she said. "We now have kids at Berkeley and USC and Notre Dame and UCLA." Two weeks ago, she was among the hosts for a group of Olympic fans who boarded a boat in Tahiti and sailed to Sydney Harbor.

McCormick got off the ship, took a drive around the city then got on a plane to return to Los Angeles. "I wanted to be there so much," she said. "I haven't missed an Olympics since Japan 1964, but I just had too much to do. I needed to do the right thing, hard as it was." And the right thing was her own Olympics, held Friday afternoon, for her foundation. She took 150 first- and second-graders, decked them out in T-shirts with the Olympic rings that said: "Pat's Little Champs." "We had five events," she said, "and we had our own medal ceremony afterward." And the highlight? "The McDonald's hamburgers and liit scoops of ice cream," she said.

"You should have seen the mess when we got done." So, while her record stays in place. Pat McCormick has moved on, tough foi any former Olympian. And at the same time, she has put, celebrated her roots. Her foundation office is in Seal Beach, just two blocks from where she was born, in a room over a grocery store. 3 Associated Press Pat McCormick, center, set Olympic women's diving standard in 1956 with her fourth gold.

Juno Irwin, left, was second and Paula Myers third in platform event. McCormick Barcelona, entered two events here. With victories in the springboard, plus one of the new events this year, the synchronized springboard, Fu would have five gold medals in diving. But Saturday, Fu's first attempt fell just short when she and teammate Guo Jingjing finished with a silver medal in the synchronized event. That leaves her springboard competition Wednesday as an attempt to tie, meaning McCormick has at least four more years on top, even if it ends up that she has to move over a bit to share the platform.

For McCormick, reached at home Friday night, Fu's record attempt will just be another part of Olympic drama that has become so special for her. "I'll definitely be watching," she said. "As a matter of fact, when you called, I was sitting here watching some equestrian and crying away. The horses are so beautiful." McCormick, 70, said that it is flattering to still be considered a prominent Olympian because of her record, but also that she has accepted that her records are there for somebody else to break. "I'd like her to win Wednesday," McCormick said.

"I admire her and I night and dance and we thought that nobody knew us, but it really was the Australians, just leaving us alone. It was so nice." She won the springboard easily, but was in fourth place with two dives left on the platform. Among her competitors was Paula Jean Myers, also from the U.S. and also coached by McCormick's husband. It was a very difficult situation.

"It was his job to help her beat me," McCormick said. "I understood that and respected him for that, but I sure could have used an arm around my shoulder and an 'I love On the sixth of seven dives, McCormick took over the lead from Myers and solidified it with her final dive. "If the first time was like your first kiss," McCormick said, "the fourth time Russians Soviet Union got good, and we were neck and neck with them in the medals race. So Sammy and the guys would talk to me and calm me down and tell me, 'Don't worry, Patsy, you'll do I was so naive, I had no idea what was going on." Her second Olympics, 1956 in Melbourne, was not as easy. McCormick was 26, had gotten married, trained right through a pregnancy and headed for Melbourne eight months after the birth of her son, Timmy.

She remembers those Games fondly, calling them "the last innocent Games," and remembering how the athletes from each country had their separate kitchens in the village. "One night, we'd eat with the Mexicans, the next they'd come and eat with us," she said. "We'd go out every.