One of the first things I did after the college admissions scandal broke was to think back to any correspondence I had with the highest-profile member implicated from USC: men’s and womladies’ns water polo head coach Jovan Vavic.
During my freshman 12 months, I covered the men’s water polo crew for the Daily Trojan and interviewed Vavic regularly. I concept returned to those interactions to attempt to remember if there was ever whatever suspect, whatever that might have alluded to — even inside the slightest of manners — the perception that he became secretly part of an illegal operation to confess students to USC with the aid of masquerading them as faux athletes. I could not.
Neither should everyone else — no longer his bosses, staff, or gamers. The outcry over the country’s huge scandal and USC’s position in it is warranted. The immediate termination of each Vavic and senior partner athletic director, Donna Heinel, became a welcome improvement, for their alleged activities no longer simplest violated the integrity of the college admissions technique but additionally became a punch in the face to all the different USC pupil-athletes who worked tough to earn a niche on a Division I crew.
Last week’s Daily Trojan editorial board flawlessly summed up the disappointment around campus. I don’t want to pile at the outcry. But having blanketed Vavic’s several water polo triumphs, attended practices, and watched him masterfully dissect opposing teams at some stage in video games, it is so difficult for me to attach this guy, this water polo god, to the criminal activity he is charged with.
Make no mistake: Vavic continues to be a water polo royalty. His bio on the USC Athletics website stretches sees you later with accolades that call for five stable scroll-downs to attain the quit: sixteen countrywide championships, a 15-time countrywide train of the 12 months, and 25 years on the helm of both the men’s and girls’ programs. For USC water polo, winning full country championships is not merely the norm—it’s expected.
Observe Vavic for five minutes during a game, and it’s now not tough to determine his strengths as an instructor: harsh, loud, and annoying. His practices, players say, had been grueling. His teams were so stacked and dominant that they could regularly win video games through five, 10, and 15 desires. Even with an insurmountable lead past due in those games, he could scorch his players with his piercing, gruff yell, audible to all of us inside earshot of the pool: “PRESS! PRESS! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”
Interviewing Vavic became nerve-wracking as a freshman beat author. He gave quick, terse solutions in his Slavic accessory. After a few games, he could run off, and the sports activities statistics director might come again empty-passed, forcing me to write a recap without fees from the teacher.
But I respected him. His players did, too. He ran a good delivery. He had no time for BS. He built a dynasty from the floor up. He turned into the teacher, the kind of leader who rarely did now not get what he wanted. At a ladies’ water polo recreation final month towards Indiana in which USC gained 19-1, I watched from throughout the pool as Vavic, shades on, leaned lower back in his chair and basked inside the route his team changed into setting on. I recalled questioning myself, “That is a person at the top of his career.”
In Hawaii, as he was getting ready to train the women’s group in an event, he was charged with conspiracy to devote racketeering. I ought to have in no way imagined that, weeks later, he might be booked right into jail at 7 a.M. And the handiest query I even have is: Why?
Why did Vavic, with a pedigree in water polo corresponding to John Wooden’s basketball, chance all of it? Why did he do it? Was it for his youngsters’ $250,000 and private-school training payments that he is alleged to have received despite the reality that he assuredly has made sufficient to stay comfortably? Was it just because he should?
Whatever Vavic’s answer is will now not be great because there may be no top answer to why all people in his position could commit such a criminal offense. If actually, his movements had been offensive and disrespectful — to loads of gamers he coached who made the roster on their personal deserves, rude to the students denied a niche at USC due to the faux recruits he put on his crew, disrespectful to the integrity of admissions, of athletics, of … well, the entirety within the call of the primary dignity that we are hoping leaders like Vavic own. That, seemingly, became an excessive amount to invite.
It has been challenging to contextualize the version of Vavic, the strict, however colorful, and legendary coach whom I respected, with what the allegations have revealed about his real identity: a deceitful guy who took advantage of his position of strength. And there is, without a doubt, nothing legendary or first-rate about that.
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