By Pauline Vu
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Don’t ask UCLA men’s volleyball head coach Al Scates
about the time in 1994 when his top-ranked team went to Indiana
Purdue-Fort Wayne expecting to earn another national championship
and instead came home with the runner-up trophy.
It’s not that Scates isn’t willing to talk about it.
It’s simply that he doesn’t remember it.
“I have a gift of repressing terrible memories,” he
said.
But the Bruin players from that 1994 team aren’t quite so
fortunate.
“Basically, losing sucks,” said Jeff Nygaard, a
junior opposite that season. “I remember losing that match
more then I remember winning anything else.”
Six years ago, the Bruin volleyball team went to IPFW to make
its bid for UCLA’s 15th national championship. The
team’s record was 26-1 going into Indiana, and the Bruins
were the heavy favorites to win it all.
But instead of taking home the glory, UCLA got upset in five
games ““ 9-15, 15-13, 4-15, 15-12, 15-12 ““ by a Penn
State team that was considered no match for the Bruins.
Go ahead. Ask some of the former UCLA players about the
’94 Penn State match. Although they’ll assure you that
it was so long ago their memories are shady, it’s surprising
to find out how much they do remember.
For instance, Penn State had this guy, Ramon Hernandez, and he
was just amazing. He was in the zone. He owned that match.
“This outside hitter ““ he was all over the court. He
would go for a dead sprint for a set 30 feet away and out-run our
blockers,” Scates said.
That’s his only memory of the match.
Kevin Wong, a junior outside hitter on that team, recalled some
of the bad calls the Bruins felt they got.
“I remember ripping my shirt off at one point. It was the
fourth or fifth bad call in a row and I just snapped,” he
said. “I remember losing game point on another terrible call,
probably the 10th one.”
But what everyone doesn’t want to remember and cannot
forget, is the fact that UCLA did not take home championship No.
15, while Penn State took home No. 1.
The Nittany Lions of the Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball
Association became the first team not from California or the
power-packed Mountain Pacific Sports Federation to win the title
that year. The instant they won, players from IPFW and Ball State,
both Midwest teams that were at the Final Four, also stormed the
court in jubilation.
“They said we didn’t belong, that we shouldn’t
even be here competing with West Coast schools,” Penn State
junior Ed Josefoski said after the match. “But we’re
here now, and West Coast, we beat your best.”
But the Bruins wouldn’t remember anything about the
competition’s reaction. They were too deep in their own
despair. Junior outside hitter Erik Sullivan chucked his runner-up
trophy at the floor of the UCLA bench, eliciting boos from the
crowd. Jeff Nygaard’s whole family had come out to see him,
but after the match he completely ignored them.
“I didn’t want to be seen by anyone,” he said.
“I didn’t go to class for a week when we got back. I
was too embarrassed.”
Wong’s response topped all. When the match ended, he just
took off, skipping the awards ceremony and all other NCAA niceties.
He ran two miles in the pouring rain back to the Fort Wayne
Marriott and stopped only to rip off his kneepads.
Six years later, Wong is asked to explain exactly why he
ran.
“Escape, maybe?” he asked. “That outcome
didn’t really match any vision or any realm of possibility of
mine. It made no sense to me at all, so I was just
escaping.”
What went wrong? How did a UCLA team up 2-1 in games and 11-4 in
game four lose this match? With the score tied 12-12 in the fifth
game, what made the Bruins lose their cool so that they were the
ones to make the mistakes that gave the game to Penn State?
Nygaard says that, yes, it’s possible his team might not
have come into the match in a fighting state of mind.
“We watched them play (in the semifinals). There really
wasn’t all that much that we were really impressed
with,” he said. “We may have taken them a little too
lightly.
“In retrospect, it’s a lot easier to say that now
than it was at the time,” he added.
Other veterans don’t believe they took Penn State lightly,
but point out that before playing the Nittany Lions, UCLA knew
little about them.
“We hadn’t seen them all year and there wasn’t
a lot of scouting material on them,” Sullivan said. “We
couldn’t stop what they were doing.”
Overall, though, the Nittany Lions just played tough ball.
“Most teams fold when we start to play as well as we
did,” Nygaard said. “They stuck around and the next
thing you know, we lost our focus.”
After the match, it seems everyone has the same recollection of
the response of coach Scates.
“He’s always the most understanding when you least
expect it,” Wong said. “When you lose a match, you
think he’s going to come down tough on you, and that’s
when he’s the most supportive.”
Paul Nihipali, a freshman middle blocker that year, recalls that
the very next day as the team was leaving the airport, Scates took
each player aside who would be returning for the next year (the
1994 team only had one senior) and began telling him what his role
would be for next year.
“He was, “˜Alright, next step, right on to
’95,'” Nihipali said. “That day, right when
we left Indiana, Al was already starting us up for a really strong
season in 1995.”
A few weeks after coming back, Scates sent the team a memo,
Nygaard said. Its message fell along these lines: “Hey boys,
we had a season that never met our goal, which is to win the NCAAs.
Because of that, the season is considered a failure. Our goal is to
win and anything short of that doesn’t matter. I’ve
already thought about the next year, and what we need to do is this
…”
It was this preparation that made the next year so perfect. UCLA
came into the Final Four with only one loss, to Ball State, and the
Bruins’ first matchup in the semifinals was against Ball
State. UCLA swept them. Then the Bruins found out they would play
Penn State for the championship.
In three short games, UCLA reclaimed its title for its 15th
championship.
“It was slated as a kind of revenge match,” Erik
Sullivan said. “We tried not to play it off like that but it
sure felt good to beat them a year later.
“It helps ease some of the pain.”
What was the score?
“15-3, 15-10, 15-10,” Nygaard said immediately.
And does he also know the score of the 1994 match off the top of
his head?
“No. Can’t dig that one out,” he said.
“Sorry.”
UCLA has never won a title at Indiana, and this is the
tournament’s first time back at IPFW after 1994. So in a way
the 2000 Bruins, though they weren’t around then, have a load
on their shoulders.
“It’s too bad for this team going into finals that
that’s what Fort Wayne means to UCLA volleyball,”
Nihipali said.
But Seth Burnham, one of the team’s five seniors, has
heard the stories. And he says the Bruins are determined not to let
down again.
“That’s the worst memory any of (the former players)
have of their entire career ““ that’s definitely on our
minds,” Burnham said. “If the younger guys don’t
know, we’ll let them know.
“(Penn State) is in the weakest league but if they put a
match together, they can beat anybody,” he added.
And though no one says anything about it, winning might just be
redemption for a UCLA men’s volleyball program that has won
the national title 17 times out of 30, and has won it everywhere
except Indiana.
Still, you definitely won’t hear talk about revenge or
redemption or even Indiana from coach Scates.
“It’s really a gift ““ not many people can do
it,” he said again of his ability to repress the worst
memories. “I can’t tell you anything about those
finals.”
Scates smiled and added simply, “But I’ll make sure
I remember every detail of this one.”