Szabo: Water polo coach Barnett will be missed

The sun was setting just before 6 p.m. Wednesday, as Newport Harbor High girls’ water polo Coach Bill Barnett used a walker to make his way to the southeast corner of the right course at Irvine’s Woollett Aquatics Center.

A crowd gathered as Barnett, now 72 years old, leaned in to address his players for the final time after a CIF Southern Section Division 1 semifinal loss to Foothill. They responded with a round of applause for their coach, then each player came up to give him a hug.

Barnett moved away, letting reporters ask him a few questions. One suggested that he appeared to wipe a tear from his eye after addressing his players.

“Oh no,” Barnett quickly responded, before admitting the moment was cool. “That was neat. Something to remember forever.”

His wife of nearly 50 years, Marcia, asked Barnett, who is recovering from a series of hip surgeries, if he wanted a chair.

“I’m fine,” he said, before he carefully walked off the deck at Woollett for one last time as the Sailors’ coach.

People won’t forget Barnett, even though his 49-year coaching career at Newport Harbor is now over. That’s one big number you can use to describe Barnett’s legacy. Another is 15, which is the number of CIF Southern Section titles he won as the Sailors’ coach, 10 with the boys and five with the girls.

The numbers are impressive for Barnett, who was also a two-time Team USA men’s water polo Olympic head coach in 1988 and ’92. But I don’t think Barnett’s legacy is defined by the numbers. I’ve been around the team long enough to know what he means to the players, who affectionately call him, “Coach B.”

“He’s so much more than a coach to us,” Newport senor center Chanel Schilling said. “What he said after [the game] was just life lessons that he’s been giving us all four years. We’re losing a mentor, not just a coach.”

Presley Pender, who was the team captain on the Sailors’ last CIF championship team in 2012, wouldn’t argue. Pender is now a junior for at the University of Michigan, and last year she tied for the team lead in goals. She remembers vividly playing at Indiana two years ago as a freshman, always a big game.

Nerves were high. But guess who she spotted when she looked up into the stands?

“I saw Coach B,” she said. “I thought to myself, ‘What in the world is he doing at this game?’ I just smiled and we made eye contact. It was an unreal experience.”

After the game, Pender got to talk to Barnett.

“He was like, ‘Yeah, I was just stopping by.’ But Bloomington, Indiana is not just a place you stop by ... I guess it really shows how much he cares about all of his players. You felt that tie with him.”

Jocelyn Manderino, now the boys’ and girls’ water polo coach at Northwood High and a club coach for Costa Mesa Aquatics, was a member of the first-ever girls’ polo team at Newport Harbor in 1995. She said that Barnett is ultimately the reason why she went into coaching.

Manderino scored four goals in the 1999 CIF Southern Section Division 1 title game, helping the Sailors win their first CIF title on the girls’ side. Her performance in that game wasn’t by accident.

“He always knew how to prep the team and individuals for those important games,” Manderino wrote in an email. “I remember before CIF finals, he spent a good hour working on my outside shot on six-on-five. His words of encouragement as I was getting frustrated kept me mentally prepared. It definitely paid off in the finals.”

Every day, Barnett had a quote on the white board on the pool deck before practice. He called it his “thought of the day.” His successor, Brian Melstrom, has been his right-hand man for 12 years, and they both taught in the math department at Newport Harbor before Barnett retired from teaching. But Melstrom said it was just this year that he realized that all of the sayings on the board could apply to Barnett himself.

“Coach Barnett has always, always preached to the girls the life lessons you can learn through sport,” Melstrom said. “All of these things are going to benefit them in their lives more than they know ... he’s teaching them about the game of life. He’s just a living, breathing example of character, almost like a John Wooden.”

I also want to personally thank Barnett. He’s made me a better reporter. With his typical short answers, I’ve learned that I have to ask the right questions, which wasn’t always easy since I knew literally nothing about water polo prior to arriving at the Daily Pilot in 2006.

Still, Barnett always was patient with me. He also taught me to always interview him first, given his tendency to rush off the pool deck soon after a game’s completion. Twice this year, I interviewed him in his sport-utility vehicle in the parking lot.

Of course, that might also be because he can’t stand for too long anymore. The first word that Barnett used to describe himself after Wednesday’s game was “tired,” as the hip surgeries in recent months have taken their toll.

“It’s good to be over with,” Barnett said, in his typical matter-of-fact way, about his coaching career. But the respect is widespread. On Wednesday night CIF Southern Section assistant commissioner Kristine Palle tweeted a photo of Barnett, along with the words, “A hero is someone who has given his/her life to something bigger than oneself.”

The reputation definitely will live on. Despite his physical hurting, Barnett obviously never lost his coaching fastball. The words “coached by Bill Barnett” still have so much pull in the collegiate water polo world. This year, six of the Sailors’ seniors — Carlee Kapana (UCLA), Rachel Whitelegge (UCLA), Isabel Leveque (Marist), Kate Pipkin (Indiana), Ellie Reid (George Washington) and Schilling (UC San Diego) — will move on to play for an NCAA Division 1 program.

Barnett just cares deeply about his players. Part of the reason he decided to make this season his last was that he felt a special bond with this group. Barnett coached the older sister of four of this year’s seniors — Sophie Leveque, Erin Reid, Elissia Schilling and Katie Erickson.

Foothill Coach Jim Brumm is in his 28th year coaching for the Knights, which he joked meant that he has “20 to go.”

“I think every coach out here knows who [Barnett] is and what’s he’s done,” Brumm said. “He’s a true legend of the game. It’s been great battling against him. I used to coach against him with the boys, and now I get a chance to coach against him with the girls. His teams definitely know what they’re doing, that’s for sure.”

CdM girls’ coach Ross Sinclair, who at 29 years old could be Barnett’s grandson, certainly knows that much. This season, Barnett made sure to end on a winning note against his Back Bay rival. The Sailors beat Sinclair’s Sea Kings three times, though Barnett missed the Battle of the Bay game in December.

“He brings so much to the game,” said Sinclair, who graduated from Newport Harbor in 2003. “I mean, I hope I can have half the career that he has. He’s the reason why I really enjoy coaching. He gave me my first coaching job. I asked him [as a senior at Newport Harbor], ‘How do I coach the 10-and-unders?’ He said, ‘Just go ahead and start coaching the 10-and-unders.’ And I coached 10-and-under boys when I was 17. It was great.

“I had to ask him, because he was the boss, you know?”

Even in a 49-year career, some things never change.