Patty Vest: Welcome to Sagecast, the podcast of Pomona College. I'm Patty Vest. Mark Wood: And I'm Mark Wood. This season on Sagecast, we'll be talking to current and former Pomona faculty about the personal, professional, and intellectual journeys that brought them to where they are today. Patty Vest: Today we're talking with the head coach for men's and women's Sagehen water polo teams, Alex Rodriguez, who's also the assistant coach for men's water polo for Team USA. Mark Wood: Welcome, Alex. It's good to have you with us. Alex Rodriguez: Yeah, thanks for having me. It's exciting. Mark Wood: So let's start with why you chose water polo. What do you love about the sport? Alex Rodriguez: I love the sport. I don't know if I chose water polo or kind of fell into water polo. I love basketball, and I just had a interview on Monday where I told them I couldn't shoot very well, I wasn't very fast, and I couldn't jump. So freshman year of high school, I didn't play at all, and I always swam. My mom put me in swimming. I was always busy, and I started water polo my sophomore year in high school actually. It was a smooth transition, and I loved it. I loved that I was pretty good at it pretty quickly. It's a little bit of basketball where you're ball handling. Tactically it's a lot like basketball, and my swimming skills that I already had really helped me progress. So that's how I chose it. Alex Rodriguez: How I love it, I think there's a lot of different sports out there obviously, a lot of different forms of entertainment, and water polo to me is energetic. I think one of the best events to go on campus is to go and watch the guys and the girls play. It's an hour, it's action-packed. There's a little bit of violence, a little bit of athleticism, fitness. Pretty much we're all pretty fit. It's a clean sport. The crowd is normally really kind and engaged. I mean they'll get into you a little bit but not like other sports generally. Alex Rodriguez: And then also too I think there's a education component of my sport's a niche sport. It's small. If you want to make millions of dollars, you shouldn't go into water polo. So most athletes are using water polo to get into a college scenario, and we've had a couple of athletes play international after just for the travel, not to make money. And so, I think you have a different kind of person that chooses water polo, someone who's a little bit more academic, and you have a little bit more of a educational component to the process. You don't have that push for, "I want my kid to be in NBA or NFL," and you don't have that pressure. And you don't have the bad part of it like parents trying to get their kids whatever they can to make as much money as they can. Mark Wood: Yeah, and for me, just watching a swimmer come halfway out of the water and stay there is amazing. The fitness and the skill involved in that are just astounding to me. Alex Rodriguez: I'm very appreciative and I enjoy Pomona-Pitzer colleges and what it's done for me and my wife and my family, but I really love coaching the younger levels, seeing a kid especially that's never played water polo. And their parents come in, they're like, "I'm not sure about this," and they think their kid's going to drown the first day or two going up and down. And I have found it's easier for me to teach a brand-new person how to swim through water polo than through swimming because generally most people... Well, because you start chasing the ball. You kind of like- Mark Wood: You have something to do. Alex Rodriguez: And you'll forget about the fact that you're swimming. So I enjoy that process of them like, "Oh, I'm struggling, coach. I'm going to drown. No, I can't do this, I can't do this." And then suddenly out of the blue, they're just going because they want to play, and they kind of forget, "Oh, I've been out here for 20, 30 minutes and haven't touched the bottom." Mark Wood: They forget to be afraid. Alex Rodriguez: Yeah, the mind's a powerful ally and enemy sometimes. Mark Wood: Yeah. Patty Vest: Absolutely. Alex, tell us a little bit about your own collegiate experience. You transferred to Pepperdine as a walk on, I believe, and then you're an integral part of their '97 NCAA championship team. Tell us a little bit about that experience. Alex Rodriguez: So I feel in my career athletically led to kind of who I am. So again, I started water polo in high school as a sophomore. I had a swimming background. We didn't have a water polo team my freshman year, and I transitioned a little bit from basketball, which I love. But again, I didn't play too much and wasn't the greatest player, and then water polo just took off pretty quickly. I enjoyed swimming. I enjoyed being in the pool, and I do enjoy a team competitive environment. But my high school, which we lost in the CIF finals in my senior year, wasn't in a high division. We were in a lower division. We weren't very good, so I went to a junior college, which we had some success there as well. Alex Rodriguez: But I'm only 5'11", and I think at that time, I was like 160. I'm not the biggest of guys. In D-1, you're normally looking at guys 6'2". When I went to Pepperdine, our center, which is the guy who sits in the middle of the pool, was like 6'4" to 290, 295, and he was a big boy. And he could swim just as fast as I could. So I used to play center in high school and junior college, and then when I went to Pepperdine, I basically had to learn a whole new game because I was not able to do what I was doing for a long time. Alex Rodriguez: So transferring in, yeah, I wasn't really recruited at all. I wanted to go to Pepperdine because a guy named Terry Schroeder, who was the coach, he was considered the best center in the world, and I was a center. And he was coaching there, and he's actually the statue in front of the Coliseum, the perfect body. So in 1984, he was chosen as that guy, and I really wanted to go there. Alex Rodriguez: I probably didn't make the wisest decision in my college search. I was wanting to play water polo in college, and several of those colleges were choices based on their programs. So when I went there, yeah, I didn't get a sniff. I remember in the first practice, we warmed up. We did some drills. We did some shooting, and then we scrimmaged for like an hour and a half. And I didn't touch the water, but by then I think I had a little bit... I've always been the type of person that I'm not scared to be told no. I'm scared of failure. I think everyone's scared of failure at some certain level, but my level is a little higher than I think most. So I was irritated that I didn't play. I didn't care all the guys were bigger than me and faster than me. I was actually pretty fast, but they were way bigger and stronger than I was. I just kind of had a chip on my shoulder, and just through that summer training, I quickly moved up. Alex Rodriguez: And in my junior year, I was actually the leading scorer of the team, and in my senior year, when we brought our center Alan Hermann and Jack Kocur off of red shirt, and then we brought in another JC transfer that was amazing. Now we were stacked. We started off an average team, probably at the bottom of our conference, to we only lost three games my senior year, and we were 3-1 versus USC. We were 3-1 versus Stanford, 3-1 versus Cal, which were the three best teams other than us. Mark Wood: So did you know you wanted to coach when you were in college, or did that come later? Alex Rodriguez: Yeah, it came during college. I think during college I really regretted losing my senior year CIF final. I played bad, and my coach, who was really hard on me at the time, but he put everything he could into our team. And I felt like I just fell down, I let him down, I let my mom down, and my mom's a real strength of my life in regards to athletics. She was the one who taught me how to ride a bike and tried to teach me to play baseball. I'm Cuban-American, so baseball was the hope of my family. I just feel like I let them down, and I think I just had the idea I wanted to go play in Europe. And I don't know if I had some great long-term plans in regards of what I'm going to do in my career, but I wanted to go back and coach and win a CIF title for my coach. That was my plan, and I don't know if I thought too much further past that. Patty Vest: So tell us how you found your way to Claremont, to the Claremont colleges. Alex Rodriguez: Oh so, yeah, I think I actually went back and was an assistant coach at Pepperdine, and I was applying to a couple of jobs. I was definitely in that point of my life that I wanted to be the man in charge, the head coach, and I actually applied to UC Santa Barbara and Pomona-Pitzer at the same time. And I really only applied at Pomona-Pitzer because my parents are close by. It was Division 3. It wasn't really known as a water polo haven in any form or fashion, and I was upset that I didn't make it farther in the process in Santa Barbara. And then I did make it into the final three here at Pomona-Pitzer, and then in my interview, I think I fell in love. Alex Rodriguez: It was the longest interview of my life. It was about 12 hours, and yeah, I came and met Lisa Beckett. And Jen Scanlon actually gave me a little tour, and I met with the committee. Then I met with the department. Then I met with the Pomona president. Then I met with the Pitzer president. Then I came back and met with both teams at night, but I loved it because every time I went into a room, you could tell the people interviewing me read everything I submitted because I had to submit a coaching philosophy, obviously my resume. I submitted some playbook stuff that I do, and you can tell that every single person, presidents, read and were prepared to interview me. And I liked that. I wanted to be somewhere where I felt like people cared about what they were doing and how they were doing it. Alex Rodriguez: So that kind of won me over to be honest right there, and then when they offered me a job, I knew that Terry was never interested in leaving because at that time, I probably wanted to be the Pepperdine head coach. And I decided, "Oh, let me try this out. It's closer to home. My parents are very important to my life." And as I got here, there was moments that I was like, "Oh my gosh, what did I get myself into?" The boys especially were not that competitive, but the kids are remarkable. I push. I think if you interview any of my athletes or former athletes, I push pretty hard. I have a lot of expectations, and they appreciate it. They want it, and until recently, I never even had penalties for kids coming late to practice or anything like that or missing practice because that never happened. Everyone shows up on time. Kids generally are pushing me to get more information out to them than I do. So I like that engagement. Alex Rodriguez: I've had several times that I've been very defensive because water polo's a small sport. On the men's side, we're talking about 50 programs, on the women's side, 65 programs. There was 1100 colleges and universities. So with this small sport, we have to compete in a Division 1, 2, 3 world, where there's no Division 3 world just exclusively for us, which I think my athletes love actually because they get to be in the water with possible Olympians and the best kids in the world. Alex Rodriguez: And I remember my fourth or fifth year here, I had a kid named Dillon O'Connell. We actually drove and played Oxy and Caltech in a double header, and they're generally at the bottom half of our conference. And Dillon was frustrated with our day, and at that time in the season, we just won our first two games of the season. We were 2-13 at that point of our season. So me, I was very appreciative of having some wins, and Dillon was frustrated. And he was like, "I'd rather go play USC and get our butts kicked. I feel like I'm more engaged, da, da, da." And I remember thinking, "Man, I'm just happy I got two wins," but I was actually proud that Dillon had this attitude because I think sometimes as we're educating the current kids that we have, a lot of things have changed in the last 20 years. And I think sometimes the kids are scared to fail, and they sometimes won't give an answer unless they know the answer because they don't want to be wrong. Alex Rodriguez: And I think sometimes that's where we're failing as educators, and I think what I try to provide in water polo, and I think I have a very easy opportunity because again, I don't have a Division 3 world where I can really just excel. We're going to play games that we're not going to have any chance of winning, and I think at the end of the day, it's good for these kids to go into these scenarios and know that I'm not going to stop yelling at them. I'm not going to sit. If you come to one of my games, and we're playing UCLA and we're losing 18-1, I'm not sitting and moping. I'm yelling. I have expectations, and they have to fulfill the expectations that I have. And I don't care. I don't care. You chose to come to Pomona-Pitzer. We're a Division 3 program. You should be comfortable with that decision. We're playing a D-1 team. No one expects you to win. Just go out. I only expect you to do is play your best and execute the things we've been working. Mark Wood: Yeah. So you came to Pomona-Pitzer in 2005. Is that right? So it's been 15 years you've been here. How has the program evolved through that time, and if you had to pick two or three moments that you'll never forget, what would they be? Alex Rodriguez: Well, the men's side was I think we won the conference in 2008. So it took us a couple of years, but in 2008, we won the conference. It was 28 years since our previous championship in 1980. So I think the women had been competitive when I got here. The type of women we get here, it's hard not to be competitive I think. You have women who are a little bit more mature. They know what they want, and they're not scared, the type of kids we get, it seems like at Pomona-Pitzer. So I've been very fortunate with the women's side to have a easier time in competing in the conference. Alex Rodriguez: Memories, unfortunately I think my highlights have been probably more early on, obviously getting over the hill and winning. So I would say my first two championships on both sides was very meaningful, but personally I have two moments that are really meaningful because obviously my son, he's about to turn five. My wife got pregnant, we got pregnant in 2014, and we were about to play LMU in NorCal. And I remember sleeping in a hotel room, so I know [inaudible 00:17:32]. But I got my phone, and it was like 5:00 in the morning. I couldn't see, and I was like, "Oh, it's 5:00. I'm going back to bed." And when I woke up an hour later, she just said the test said pregnant, and I got all emotional. And we're about to play a 8:00 game against LMU. So I call her, I'm excited, we talk on the phone. Then she's like, "You can't tell anybody," because I didn't know. I'm an only child, so I don't know about those... She's like, "You can't tell anyone until the first trimester." And I'm like, "Are you kidding me? How am I not going to tell anybody this?" Alex Rodriguez: So I'm sitting in the bus, and I'm immediately texting one of my best friends. I'm like, "Jack, oh my God, you should wake up. I got to tell you something." And my co-coach Alex La is sitting there, and he knows something's wrong. And I'm sitting there. I'm trying to play it cool, and the team gets off the bus. They go in. We're walking, and we're in the parking lot. And Alex is like, "What's going on?" I'm like, "Chris is pregnant." And Alex La starts bawling. He's crying. He hugs me. So he's hugging me. I'm hugging him back. We're both crying, and here comes LMU, the team. We're in the middle, two men hugging, crying, and LMU's walking around us into the pool. So anyways, we go on to play the game. I don't tell the team. I don't tell the team. We go on to play the game, and we actually beat LMU for the first time in our history. And so, I'm so excited. It's amazing, amazing experience. Alex Rodriguez: Okay, now fast forward, and now it's 2016. I just came off my sabbatical for the Olympics, and I kind of had the inkling something was going on. But we were about to play UCI. Now UCI is historically one of the top historical programs. They're a little down but historically one of the top programs, and I felt good. We walked in, and these are both on the men's side because obviously my kids were born... or I found out we were pregnant at that time, but now we're playing UCI. Now we show up, and we're again at that same tournament actually. My guys are focused. They look like the D-1 team, and the UCI guys, who lost, that's why they're playing us. They're just sitting around. It's a morning game. They're upset that they lost to Pepperdine the day before. Alex Rodriguez: So anyways, we're about to start the game, and I normally don't have my phone on. But I had my phone, and I could see my wife sent me a text. And I'm like, "Oh, I'll just put it in my pocket," and I turned off the vibration. Well anyways, we beat UCI. UCI's seventh in the country at the time. This is like my biggest win of my career. I'm so excited, and then I'm texting my wife that we actually won. And I could see there's like 10 or 15 texts. I text her we won, then I call her. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, we got to prepare for Air Force. I'll call you back." And then she sends me a text that she's sad. And I'm like, "Why are you sad?" And she's [inaudible 00:20:50] my daughter, she was pregnant again, and she sent it on top. But she thought some of the kids might have my phone or my iPad. We're tagging the game, my managers. So she sent a bunch of texts to me to try to hide that, and I didn't actually scroll up and read all the texts. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, you're pregnant again?" And I'm like, "Can we wait for the third one to be the Olympics or something?" Mark Wood: Yeah, two or three are good luck, huh? Alex Rodriguez: Yeah. No, this one came a little earlier, so no game. Yeah, my two biggest wins happened to be when my wife told me we are pregnant. So that was exciting. Patty Vest: That is exciting. Mark Wood: That's a good story. Alex Rodriguez: Yeah. Now it's interesting, it took a while for the kids, especially the first one, the kids took a while to understand it. And I think I told them the story at the banquet. Obviously once we told everybody, I told the parents, and now everyone was completely surprised. Patty Vest: So your team didn't see you and your coach cry. Alex Rodriguez: No, they didn't. They were in already. They were warming up, but I wish I could've had video of it because it was [inaudible 00:22:11] because I could see the LMU guys walking around us. Anyone who has kids knows that when I saw my son and my daughter born, when I first found out they're pregnant even, this time Charlotte, it's emotional. Being a father is like nothing else. It's completely changed my life. So having kids is amazing. I actually tell people I always regret that I waited so long. Patty Vest: Nice. Well, you are on your way. You're in with the three. Alex Rodriguez: We're on our way. Yeah, yeah, I know. The party of five, that's what we keep calling it, party of five. Patty Vest: That's awesome. Alex, tell us a little bit about your relationship with USA water polo. You've had a few roles there, and you've been there for a bit. And you mentioned your experience at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Can you tell us a little bit about your roles there, and then kind of dovetail into the Olympics? Alex Rodriguez: Yeah so, as you said, I've been associated in different ways. Again, our sport's smaller. It's niche, especially when I was at Pepperdine. I was pretty involved in something called Premier League at that time, and then when I came over here, obviously coaching men and women, I was involved with our development levels of the women's side. But honestly I was kind of stepping back a little bit. My wife coaches as well, and I stopped doing that. It was like a three-year gap that I wasn't involved in anything, and we go forward. Alex Rodriguez: And after the 2012 Olympics, Terry Schroeder, who's actually my college coach, steps down, and they hire a new guy named Dejan Udovicic. He's a Serbian head coach. He's a two-time bronze medal, three-time world champion, gold medalist as a coach. His Serbia team that he developed from a junior level to senior level is still considered the best team in the world right now. He takes the realm and immediately kind of opens up all the positions of the pipeline teams. Alex Rodriguez: So the way USA water polo works and most Olympic development programs work is you have the senior team, which doesn't matter how old you are. It's completely open. The best players are the best, and then you normally have a 20 and under, an 18 and under, a 16 and under. And then some of the European teams will even have a 14 under national team. And then you have head coaches in those, and then if you're good if you're 14, you might get thrown up to the 16s. If you're good enough, you get thrown up. It's all about development, especially in the European teams. Alex Rodriguez: But I applied for the 18 and the 20 under positions, and when he was going through the job, I was not a sexy pick at any means. At that time, I'd been here for a while, and I do get looked down a little bit in the community as a Division 3 coach. A lot of people don't understand the lack of training that we have, and if you're a Division 1 player, you're training on the men's side. You're training all summer with your team, and obviously you have scholarships. You have international players. You're playing a bunch of summer stuff. You're playing in spring too, but spring is more limited to training, just in house. But summertime you're training as a group and competing against other teams, and then we generally practice about 10 days before we play our first game on the men's side. Alex Rodriguez: On the women's side, we have a little bit more. We have normally two or three weeks before we play our first game, but by the time we play our first game generally on the women's side, you have half the teams are halfway through their season. They've played about 30 games. They probably have 15, 16 games under their belts, and on the women's side, not much in the summer, not Division 1-wise. But they'll start up pretty much in the fall and train all fall, play one competition or two competitions in the fall and then start pretty much right after Christmas and New Year's and depending on the program and train. And we don't start until January 15th, and we normally start playing games like February. Alex Rodriguez: So it's completely different in regards to that aspect. So it just makes it hard. We lose dramatically to some of those top D-1 teams, and in this community, people are like, "Man, why are you even playing a USC, UCLA?" And honestly our sport's so small that we're kind of in the middle of both. If you took all 40, 50 teams on the men's side, we're anywhere between that 15 and 25 range depending on the year. On the women's side, we're a little bit lower because there's more teams, more D-1, more scholarships. So we're probably in that 25 to 30 range, and if you know me at all, you know I'd rather play the teams better than us than the teams worse than us. Alex Rodriguez: So yeah, I think when I applied, he just looked at my resume, and he didn't know or care. I think in any field, you have people take care of their people. So in the past it's like oh, if you're an Olympian, you're just going to hire other Olympians. Or if you're from a certain college, you're going to hire people from that college, and he didn't care about that. And I remember after he hired me... He hired me first as a junior team coach, the 20 and under coach, and then immediately I was moved down to 18s because he reshuffled everything pretty quickly. So I did 18s, and I was not hired as an assistant coach. But the second assistant coach at that time was a volunteer, and I think the guy that they hired originally was looking for more and quickly disappeared it seemed like. And I thought as a pipeline coach, I should be at every senior team practice. Alex Rodriguez: Me, as a kind of a nerd a little bit, I would love to just sit there and watch to see how the best in the world are training. That's one of my favorite things I have in regards to USA water polo. I get to see the best coaches in the world train and steal ideas and see what they're doing and learn from that. So I just showed up to a bunch of practices, and then eventually he started including me in the practice. And then I feel like eventually he was like, "Hey, do you want to go on some trips?" And slowly but surely, I was... I would tease him because I don't think I was ever like, "Hey, you're a second assistant coach." I'm just going on trips, and I'm involved. Alex Rodriguez: But it was tough. It was tough doing the EU. I mean there would be times that... My first trip was almost six and a half weeks. So I went a week and a half to Italy with the youth team. Then we were three weeks in Istanbul, and then from Istanbul I went to Serbia for like half a week and then Kazakhstan for a week. And that Serbia/Kazakhstan was with the senior team, and then I was with the youth team. So I did that a couple of times, which just made it challenging to have a family and kids and balance the Pomona-Pitzer program. I coach two teams, so I have to recruit for both. I have to do twice as much basically, and then to do the national team stuff, which requires a lot of travel, a lot of time, a lot of stress. It's a very stressful environment. Alex Rodriguez: And then I think the Rio Olympics, I've had to talk about this a couple of times recently, but I remember getting so nervous. At the Olympics, they have a call room. Most world championships, they'll have a call room. So you go warm up in a pool away from the facility, and then they'll walk the team into... And they'll have basically announcements where the team walks up, but the coaches have to be with the team. And then we go sit on the bench. So I just still remember walking behind our second goalie into the arena, and I [inaudible 00:30:48] I was like, "I'm about to walk into the Olympics. This is..." I completely panicked, but I have an appreciation now for more professional sports. Alex Rodriguez: The pressure that is in the Olympics is unlike anything I can compare to in my small sport, and I had a vision of what an NBA guy or a NFL guy, with the media, with people constantly stopping you and asking for pictures. I have a lot of respect for Michael Phelps now. A lot of people have differing opinions of him, but he stays in the village. A lot of the more popular athletes, like the NBA guys, they stay in a cruise ship. They're not in the village, but he stays in the village. And he eats in the meal hall just like everybody else, and he gets stopped constantly asked for pictures. And I never saw him one single time be disrespectful, and he has so much pressure. He's swimming basically with a camera in his face the whole time, and I have a lot of respect for that scenario, for what he does, and what he did, and for some of those athletes too. I mean there's a lot of pressure, a lot of stress, the media aspect, scheduling. Alex Rodriguez: The traffic in Brazil was horrible. It would take us like 45 minutes. They basically had the two... I felt bad for Brazilians. They had a two-lane highway, and they would block one off for Olympic vehicles only. So people complain about L.A. traffic. It's like you had two lanes of packed people without the Olympics going on trying to get somewhere, and now they're saying, "Oh, we're going to give the Olympic vehicles, buses, everything one lane, and you guys are all stuck in one lane." I mean it was horrible. It would take us probably an hour and a half to get somewhere where it might have been a 25-minute drive without traffic. So I couldn't imagine what those people were going through to try to get from one spot to one spot. Mark Wood: So the coronavirus outbreak has obviously upended athletic competitions at every level, from toddlers up to professionals. What's the impact been so far on your athletes and your programs? Alex Rodriguez: Well, I think... USA water polo or Pomona-Pitzer? Mark Wood: Oh well, both. Patty Vest: All of them, all of them. Mark Wood: All of them, yeah, I guess. Alex Rodriguez: USA, it's been difficult I think. I feel really bad for the women's team because men's water polo is in the fall, and women's water polo is in the spring. So the women's team, which is the best in the world, those girls took off the whole year. So they took off fall and obviously spring. Our athletes took off spring, which at the end of the day now, that actually doesn't hurt them as much because almost everybody's taking off for the spring, and they're trying to sign up for some [JZ 00:34:04] classes. Alex Rodriguez: But it's difficult because we have older players. We have Jesse Smith. He's a father of four. He's on the team, and I think for sure this was his last go around. Now he has to try to figure out how he's going to hopefully, because I don't think anyone knows how long this is going to last and how things are going to go. I think it's going to be similar to 9/11 where there's going to be a lot of changes after. I heard someone say that no one's going to shake hands anymore, the simplest one, but there's going to be a lot of changes in the future. And we don't know the answer. My wife wanted to bring the kids and her mother and my friend to the Olympics to support me and watch, and now we're trying to get money back from the airlines for their flights. And so, there's a lot of aspects other than the horrible things that are happening to people. There's a lot of aspects up in the air. Alex Rodriguez: And they rescheduled the Olympics for 2021. So now, even for me, I'm worried about my position because I took a sabbatical this spring to be there for full-time training. It's like well, are they going to give me another... Basically you get a sabbatical, a full year every seven years or half a semester, half a year, every three and a half years. Well, will I get another one to maintain? We train in Torrance. We do double practices every day except for Wednesday. Alex Rodriguez: And so, I drive in the morning. I leave here around 4:15 to Torrance. I normally stay at the Starbucks until practice, and then I honestly stay the night Monday and Tuesday nights there because Torrance is literally the farthest place away from Upland. It's like six freeways. I mean there's no direct route there. I didn't realize how difficult this would've been. I used to complain. We used to train in Orange County, which obviously with traffic could be a couple of hours, but normally it was like 45, 50 minutes. I could do that. I can't do two hours one way, especially now, my seventh year of doing this. So I was staying out there quite a bit. On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights I was staying, and then Friday nights, I would just eat the traffic and just try to get home to be with the kids as much as I can. Alex Rodriguez: So yeah, there's a lot of things that are unknown for us. There's 12 teams on the Olympics, so two brackets of six, and nine teams have already been kind of confirmed. But there's three teams that need to still be confirmed in a tournament. When are they going to be able to schedule that? It was supposed to be two weeks ago, and then now FINA, which is our governing board, is trying to schedule the tournament in July possibly. But is everything going to be ready in July? And if we keep pushing that back, I mean that's... I read something that there's only 55% of the athletes have qualified for Olympics. So you're talking about a lot of qualifications still need to happen for that Olympic Games. Alex Rodriguez: And I think, yeah, the amount of revenue loss, the travel, I mean a lot of people have bought their tickets, and obviously the airlines are not giving them back, the money, easily. And that's not even discussing the health concerns and the loss of life that we've had already, and we're going to have more obviously. Japan came out with a lot more cases recently. Alex Rodriguez: Pomona-Pitzer-wise, yeah, I feel bad for the seniors. They don't get to do their graduation. The girls, we did not have any seniors on the team, but they were playing pretty well, and to have their season just ended, this is unheard of in recent times that the NCAA just canceled. I know I love it being stuck at home with my kids because there was a point here that... The first 10 days, I was like, "Man, I haven't been home 10 days since probably like 2008, 2009. I can't even remember." So just for me, I was loving it. I get to play with the kids. I make breakfast every morning. Alex Rodriguez: My wife is a exercise monster, so she gets me up every morning and works me out. Yeah, it's really sad actually to have a woman nine and a half months pregnant still be able to beat you in workouts and yoga, but yeah, for me it's been great. I'm loving it. We're pretty lucky to have a pretty nice house and a lot of space. I think the kids are starting to go a little loco with the rain, not being able to go outside, but I've enjoyed the family time. I'm hoping everyone's just trying to make the best of what's going on and just focusing on trying to self-improvement, trying to keep the people you love close to you because you never know with what's going on. Patty Vest: Alex, so you're also an associate professor of physical education. What are some of the classes that you teach? Alex Rodriguez: So, everyone teases me because I used to teach archery. So archery, [inaudible 00:39:53] fitness, beginning swim, weight training. I've taught lifeguarding in the past. I love my beginning swim. That's the one that, I think we talked earlier in this about, seeing someone at the first time be able to swim and getting that confidence, and the older I get, the more I realize life is just about confidence. It's just confidence, confidence, confidence, and I think for me at Pomona-Pitzer, trying to bridge the gap of, because I don't think we're still... Even at Pomona-Pitzer, athletics has changed a lot in the last four or five years. Alex Rodriguez: It's been a amazing experience to see some non-athletic, non-sports kid cross over. So for my beginning swim class, seeing kids, literally it's something that I think every student at Pomona-Pitzer should have to, and I guess it's Pomona specifically for me now, should be able to swim. And to see kids overcome their fears is remarkable because to me, swimming's so natural and so easy. And to see these kids come in, and we take them to Pendleton where they could stand. And they could hold onto the wall, and they're scared to let go of the wall. And I'm like, "Hey, you could stand. Just relax," and getting them to relax, getting them to float on their back and seeing the steps of that. Alex Rodriguez: My weight-training class I know I enjoyed quite a bit. I kind of have the same philosophy in all my classes. I kind of break them up into more advanced kids. To me, it's spending more time preparing to work out and just chatting with them than spending a lot of one-on-one time. I try to focus on the medium and the beginner levels. So for weight training, we always have athletes that are athletes playing sports. "Show me your workout that your coach gave you or now that Greg gave you, and go at it. And I'll give you little critiques. I'll help you spot," but I try to focus on the kids who are scared of going in the weight room. We have kids all the time that are scared, and they just don't have enough confidence. Alex Rodriguez: So I kick out everybody the first half of the semester, and then as they get confident with the machines and the workouts, I open it up. So it turns into sometimes, depending on especially afternoon class, it turns into a madhouse with a bunch of kids, but I want that little girl that is scared to go get her workout and not worry about the big football guy because he looks scary. You got to get your own workout because at the end of the day, they're not going to be 19, 20, 21, 22 years old forever. They're going to be 30. They're going to be 40. They're going to be 45, and they're going to have to go before work and get a workout in. And then they'll have to have the confidence to like, "Hey, I know this person's here. Maybe he's big. He looks like he knows what's he doing, but it doesn't matter. I'm doing my workout. I need to get my time in and then get out." So I enjoy that connection with those type of kids, and I love it. Alex Rodriguez: My archery class was, I remember... Archery can be kind of boring to teach because once you teach them the mechanics, it's just them shooting, repetition, and there's not a lot of engagement for the instructor at times. But I love it because I would try to shoot with them, and it's such a relaxing... I think sometimes my life, I feel like it's going fast and going crazy, and it's just a moment where you just focus on your breathing. You focus on your stance, and I don't know, there's something calming about letting go of the arrow and seeing it fly across the air and hitting a target correctly. Mark Wood: It's kind of zen. Alex Rodriguez: I enjoy the process. Huh? Mark Wood: I said it's kind of zen. Alex Rodriguez: Yeah, very zen, very zen. Frustrating though because there's times that you don't feel right, and you can't figure it out. And you can't get that relax. You can't get that stance, but yeah, taking a moment I think with our world right now, so much social media, having a little bit more of a zen theme within yourself, enjoying the moment, enjoying where you're at, knowing that you're in the spot you're supposed to be at, and being quiet mind-wise is super important. Mark Wood: So on that note, we're going to wrap this up. We've been talking with Sagehen head water polo coach Alex Rodriguez. Thanks Alex, and we're looking forward to seeing your teams back in the water one of these days. Go Hens. Alex Rodriguez: Yeah, thank you. I'm hopeful we'll be back in the fall, but I just want to wish everyone health, and stay safe. Stay home. Social distance, and yeah, I want to wish everyone the best. Patty Vest: Thanks, Alex. Alex Rodriguez: Thanks, guys. Patty Vest: And to all who stuck with us this far, thanks for listening to Sagecast, the podcast at Pomona College. Stay safe, and until next time.