MARY CIECEK/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Adam
Naeve, middle blocker for the volleyball team, was named
national Player of the Week.
By Pauline Vu
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Two years ago Adam Naeve sat outside the Wooden Center and said,
“I like volleyball and all, but it doesn’t in any way
define who I am. It’s just something I’m good
at.”
Reminded of this on Monday, Naeve smiles, a bit abashed.
“Maybe I spoke too soon before,” he said.
Naeve (pronounced “Navy”), a middle blocker on the
UCLA volleyball team, is in his last year with the school and
program. Named this week’s national Player of the Week, he
happens to be very good at his position.
“Naeve got robbed,” senior Mark Williams said of
Naeve not being named to the league’s first-team.
“There’s not another (college) middle who can come
close to his caliber of play.”
As he heads into this weekend’s NCAA Final Four, Naeve
ponders the changes that occurred over the past five years.
Well, the superstition he had about having to put away his very
first set in a game is gone.
“I used to be like, “˜I have to have a good start to
have a good game,’ because if I got blocked or hit the ball
out my first couple swings my confidence wouldn’t be very
high,” he said, “but that’s gone away.”
He’s louder on the court now, and at one point in
Saturday’s league championship game he let his teammates know
what he thought of UCLA’s play, give or take an expletive or
two.
“If we’re not playing as well as we should be, he
makes sure that everyone knows it,” said Assistant Coach
Brian Rofer. “He commands respect from the other players when
he tells them we have to pick up our game.”
He doesn’t allow outside distractions to affect him.
Whereas his mind used to wander, at Saturday’s game Naeve
wouldn’t let a fan’s repeated call of “Tom
Green!” ““ who he does bear a resemblance to ““ get
to him.
“I’m only annoyed because I don’t think the
guy’s funny,” said Naeve. “If I liked the guy
it’d be cool.
“People can say anything to me; I don’t hear it. If
I miss a serve, it’s because I screwed up, not because of the
fans.”
And, most important, Naeve’s attitude toward volleyball
has changed.
“After I put more thought into it, it’s been a
pretty big part of my life,” he said.
Nothing made him realize this more than when he took off school
last year to train in Colorado Springs for a spot on the Olympic
team.
There, Naeve was one of six middle blockers competing for three
spots. And it was then that he learned an important lesson about
how to get ahead in volleyball.
“I didn’t realize that for the guys there,
that’s their job,” said Naeve. “I thought of
volleyball as more of a game. I was still a kid having fun. Now
I’m realizing it’s a profession.”
When the national team was allowed a break over winter, Naeve
opted not to go back. He figured out that if he didn’t take
his classes soon, he’d have a huge load coming back to
school. Also, out of the six middles, he was sixth on the depth
chart.
So he came back to UCLA and there something else changed: his
attitude about winning.
Naeve entered UCLA the same year as setter Brandon Taliaferro
and the two began following the same path. They started as true
freshmen. They earned similar All-American honors as freshmen,
sophomores and juniors. They even challenged each other for the
career ace record. But their paths diverged when Naeve went for
that shot at the Olympics while Taliaferro took the Bruins to their
18th national title last year.
Naeve recalled that when the two were being interviewed as
freshmen, the last question of the interview was, “Would the
whole year be a disappointment if you didn’t win a
championship?”
“We looked at each other and smiled and said yes. And we
both said, at the time, that we wanted four rings,” Naeve
said, shaking his head a bit at their youth and expectations.
Taliaferro didn’t get four rings. He only won the
championship his sophomore year, so last season as a senior he felt
the pressure of UCLA tradition behind him.
“You need two rings to be semi-respectable,”
Taliaferro said before the title game against Ohio State last
year.
UCLA won that game, giving Taliaferro his second ring.
It’s not like that anymore for Naeve.
“Maybe I’m the only UCLA volleyball player to think
like this, but I just don’t see it as a waste of time anymore
if you don’t win the national championship,” he said.
“That’s not saying that I don’t want to win. I
just don’t think that the whole year is a loss if we
don’t win.”
Coming down to these last games, Naeve has decided that he will
not second-guess any decision he’s made.
“Winning is one of the greatest feelings ever, especially
winning the national championship. But all I can do is go into the
final matches and play without any regrets,” he said.
“If I do that, whatever happens will be the right
outcome.”
Even if the outcome is a loss?
“Yeah. If I play with no regrets, I’ve given my all.
If the other team beats us, they deserve it.”
In these final games, Naeve’s turning up the intensity.
Head Coach Al Scates said that at Monday’s practice he had to
let Naeve and Williams out at 5 p.m. while the rest of the team
kept playing until 5:30 p.m. because the seniors were practicing
too hard.
“They’d had enough,” said Scates. “I
didn’t want to use them up.”
But if Naeve’s getting more intense, it’s not
because he’s about to leave.
“I’m not sentimental like that. Yeah, I’ll
never be able to play volleyball here again but I just don’t
think of things as coming to an end,” he said. “I
don’t see beginnings and endings, I just see a continuous
flow of things.”
After all, no matter what happens at the NCAA Tournament, things
won’t end for Naeve after the season does. When he heads back
to Colorado Springs, it’ll be because volleyball means far
more to him than it once did.
Even if it doesn’t quite define him.