PAUL WELLMAN
COVER STORY
OF THE POOL
UCSB WATER POLO SCORES WITH HOMETOWN TEAM by Nick Welsh
f national headlines are awash with stories of viscously obese teens unable to lumber off their couches, none of this is evident poolside at the three high schools and one university where water polo is played in Santa Barbara. There you see growing legions of leanly muscled young men and women playing with a skill and intensity that borders on frightening. In the water, it’s a battle for survival that would make Darwin wince, as players seek to drown each other in a manner that comports with rules and regulations handed down in the late 19th century by a Scotsman named William Wilson. In other words, it’s totally insane. And that may explain the sport’s surging popularity. At the collegiate level, water polo is alive and kicking at UCSB. It’s also probably scratching, pulling, and yanking on Speedos. UCSB’s team ranks in the top 10, though Division I standings tend to fluctuate with all the volatility of the stock market. With Coach Wolf Wigo at the helm — himself an Olympic legend — UCSB is now winning recruiting wars it used to lose. And, to be sure, its fans are very much in the stands. Six members of the men’s water polo team are hometown drafts: Kevin Cappon, Kenny Constantinides, Brendan McElroy, Shane Hauschild, Derek Shoemaker, and Chase Racich. One of them, Constantinides, took a particularly circuitous path to the Gaucho team. Here is his story.
y WATER WARRIORS: UCSB water polo coach Wolf Wigo did not have to look far to find players who could take a beating and keep on ticking — six of the squad came out of high schools surrounding the campus. Pictured from left are Kenny Constantinides, Derek Shoemaker, Brendan McElroy, Chase Racich, Kevin Cappon, and Shane Hauschild.
K
enny Constantinides is the guy nobody wants to meet in the deep end of the pool — or, for that matter, anywhere in the water. A ferocious defender with an awesome outside shot, Constantinides has been blessed with a radar that renders the violent chaos of water polo magically coherent. In 2006, he churned the water for Santa Barbara’s 18-and-under club that won the national Junior Olympics in Southern California. That same year, he played for the Santa Barbara High School team that won the CIF Division II water polo championships. Had Constantinides taken the obvious path, he would have been showered with scholarship offers from Division I schools, entranced by his game-changing abilities. He’d have been a star. But that would have been too obvious. And Constantinides, it turns out, had other ideas. By the time he was 17, Constantinides was determined to become a Navy SEAL, one of the most elite fighting forces in the nation. Despite protests from his parents, coaches, and friends — there were, after all, two wars going on — Constantinides proved resolute and utterly intractable. At age 18, he signed
up. Three days after turning 19, he started Hell Week, the most insanely grueling period of the most insanely grueling training camp of any in the armed services. Of the 280 enlistees to start down this excruciating road, only 33 made it. He was one. After six years — two dedicated to training and four with deployments in Iraq and Gulf States — Constantinides decided it was time to go home; to Santa Barbara. That was June 2013. Today, Constantinides is at UCSB, one of nearly 500 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars enrolled there. He’s signed up for four classes — 14 credits — a full load. This week, at age 25, he took his first midterm exam. Constantinides also works 24 hours a week as an emergency response technician in Isla Vista for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department. His ultimate dream is to work for a fire department in Santa Barbara County. To that end, he also attended — and aced — Allan Hancock’s fire academy last year. And then there’s water polo. That’s another 25 hours a week. “I’ve never not been busy,” Constantinides explained. But it’s more than that. “First, I missed the CONT’D p. 27
november 6, 2014
THE INDEPENDENt
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