Hutten drives himself, team

Tim Hutten’s passion for greatness is no less noticeable than the chlorine gleam of his clean-cut blond hair.

Doubters need only ask him to unzip the leather binder he carries everywhere to reveal a standard yellow legal pad that is consumed by water polo notes, diagrams and other motivational nuggets he gleans from coaches, teammates, opponents, even his own idle thoughts.

But the UC Irvine senior is seldom idle. And the lined yellow paper is hardly the only thing Hutten works over.

He can ransack a weight room in his quest for muscle mass.

At 6-foot-5, 217 pounds, he can physically overpower, or at least match, all but a select few opponents in the two-meter region, where aquatic atrocities often go unseen, submerged by a splashy foam of bubbles and barbarism.

And if physical prowess alone isn’t enough, he usually finds a creative way to propel the ball into the back of the cage.

When it comes to his studies, the political science major can read through reams of research to comfortably attain the standards required of a multiple Big West Conference scholar-athlete honoree.

“He makes the decision to work hard on things that are not easy to work hard on,” UCI Coach Marc Hunt said. “Tim is a very self-motivated, hard-working young man.”

Hutten also regularly does plenty of damage to the stat sheet. Heading into tonight’s 7 o’clock nonconference game at Long Beach State, he leads the nation in goals per game (4.86). In seven contests this season, Hutten has amassed 34 goals, including a career-high-tying seven in a season-opening win over Cal Baptist and a sudden-death overtime loss Saturday against No. 3-ranked UCLA.

Hutten, who redshirted last season, after which he spent competing for the U.S. national team, also leads the No. 6-ranked Anteaters (4-3) in intangibles.

“The leadership between Tim Hutten and Colin Mello really drives the team,” Hunt said. “[Hutten] does a lot of the right things you’d want a kid to do. When you’ve got leadership like that, it filters through the entire team and you know you’re going to get focused kids.”

Hutten, however, was anything but a focused kid at Los Alamitos High. A self-confessed slacker back then, Hutten spearheaded three Sunset League championship teams and earned All-CIF Southern Section and All-American honors in the pool.

Out of the water, he was significantly less fluid. His mother, Cindy, in an attempt to keep him on a path toward college, arranged his class schedule with a high degree of difficulty.

Hutten once convinced a counselor to replace his challenging courses with easy electives. But, once his mom got wind of his attempt to breeze through a semester, she blew into the counselor’s office to wage a successful counterattack.

Though Hutten excelled in his sport, his grades were suspect enough to dissuade most college recruiters.

Ted Newland, now the Anteaters’ coach emeritus working alongside Hunt, made UCI the only four-year school to show any interest. Newland’s partial scholarship offer convinced Hutten to pass up his projected path to a community college and join what he now refers to as, “The Program.”

“I was sort of in a different mindset,” Hutten said of his high school days — or daze. “I didn’t really care if I went to a good college or not. And I didn’t really have the same goals or motivation to be successful.”

Hutten said his drive to succeed was sparked by Newland, Hunt, and the collective wisdom of several former UCI players invited back to address the team.

“We have some alumni in pretty powerful positions,” Hutten said. “Looking at those guys and the way they were doing things was kind of a wake-up call. I realized I didn’t want to be flipping burgers, delivering newspapers, or working in a gas station one day. I wanted to go out and achieve something for myself.”

Newly motivated, Hutten applied himself in the classroom and poured himself into the pool, focusing on improving every day.

“I keep a notebook and I try to set goals for myself,” said Hutten, who is on his fourth legal pad of the season. “Before every practice, I’ll try to think of one or two specific things I want to work on.”

Hutten’s main goal is to maximize this UCI team’s potential, before returning to the national team and preparing for the 2008 Olympics.

“Since the end of last season, people have been saying this is UCI’s year,” he said. “At the end of the season, I want to look back and say this team did as well as it possibly could have. This is my senior year and I don’t want to have any regrets.”

Hutten believes the Anteaters, who open MPSF play Sunday at UC Santa Barbara, still have what it takes to achieve greatness this season.

“Whether we won or not isn’t really as important as whether we reached our full potential ... Right now, I think we’re as capable as ever. We have a few losses, but we have a lot of room for improvement.”

BARRY FAULKNER may be reached at (714) 966-4615 or at barry.faulkner@latimes.com.