Loyola Water Polo Star Would Rather Score Well in Class : College: Tim Waggoner, the Lions’ top scorer, says his business education is ‘the main thing in my life now because I know that I will never be in a milk commercial for my water polo playing.’

Playing a sport in college takes a lot of time. It’s not every student who can play sports and do well in school.

Tim Waggoner, leading scorer for the Loyola Marymount water polo team, has had to decide which takes priority--sports or education. Education is the winner.

A business major, Waggoner enjoys the rigors of an accounting class because of the challenge.

“Doing well in school is important to me,” Waggoner said. “It’s the main thing in my life now because I know that I will never be in a milk commercial for my water polo playing.

“Now that I’m taking the upper-division classes, I like my major even more than I thought I would. I find the business classes much more interesting than the lower division classes.”

Waggoner has succeeded in the water as well. He leads the Lions, now 7-9, into this weekend’s UC Riverside Tournament with 33 goals and four assists.

Attending Loyola was not his first choice--that was Humboldt State--but he says that he is satisfied. One of his reasons for attending Loyola was to combine a quality education with water polo.

“I was going to go to Humboldt and major in fisheries, but I decided that I wanted to play water polo because of how much I enjoyed it in high school,” Waggoner said.

Finding time to study is hard for players who practice almost six hours every day and play in tournaments on weekends.

“I rarely have a free weekend. I just have to cram the studying in when I can,” he said.

Coach Jim McMillan said that next year he expects Waggoner to become the captain of the team. The only thing that McMillan says Waggoner has to work on is being more vocal to encourage the team.

“As a junior, he is a quiet leader,” McMillan said. “He’s very intense in the game and likes to win.

“The thing that most impresses me is the kind of priorities that he has made. For him school comes first, then water polo, and finally his personal life.”

Waggoner, a 6-foot-2, 190-pounder from Indio, plays the two-meter position, directly in front of the goalie. The position is the last line of defense and the front line of offense.

He likes the two-meter spot because you have to be tough to stay in with the larger players--if opponents want to score they have to beat him.

Though an interest in business is his driving force, he doesn’t expect to completely leave water polo behind. Playing in clubs is how he hopes to keep enthusiasm for the game. He is not, however, going to try out for the U.S. team because of the time it would cost him.

Eventually, he hopes to get into coaching high school water polo on a part-time basis.

“I don’t think that I would want to be the head coach, but I would definitely like to help out,” Waggoner said. “I could definitely see myself very easily doing that.

“In high school, I used to coach a (youth) group and that was fun, coaching the little guys. It was just that I could tell them all of my secrets of what and how to do things. I gave them the benefit of whatever insight I had to bring about the better player in them. My team won the gold for its age group.”

He explains his place on the Loyola team by saying that he is just there to help the Lions win. Most of all, he says that he has teammates who can score goals and play as a unit.

“I guess that Brad (Giannini) is one of our main assets,” Waggoner said. “When he has a good game, then we have a good game. He always sparks our fire.”

Giannini is the team’s top goalie.

Cal State Long Beach assistant coach Guy Baker and player Steve Laughlin were the first to influence Waggoner to play water polo. Originally he wanted to play football (and end up on the Dallas Cowboys) but doesn’t regret his decision.

“My friends really got me into it because they were playing all of the time, so I started playing with them,” Waggoner said. “I’m happy that I chose water polo because I can’t see myself running around on a football field anymore. I’m much more comfortable in the water.”

The one thing that he misses is hunting and fishing with his father, Gilbert, which he did regularly until he went to college. For the past three years he hasn’t had the time. He misses it mostly because of the time he spent with his father.

“I’ve been hunting since I was 3, and it brought all of our friends and family together,” Waggoner said. “All the men would go off and drink a few beers and tell a few stories, then we had a feast.”

Waggoner realizes that his struggles won’t stop when he graduates. He knows that starting in business is tough. Waggoner says he is more than willing to work his way to the top. He doesn’t plan on just treading water.