Q&A; WITH GENAI KERR:

A 6-foot-8, 225-pound world-class athlete stood up in front of a third-grade class at the Newport Sports Museum Friday morning and asked a question almost everyone gets wrong.

“How many know what sport I play?” Genai Kerr said.

“Basketball!” one boy yelled.

“Football!” a girl screamed.

“Golf!” said a boy, putting a shocked look on Kerr’s face.

C’mon, Kerr is way more ripped than your average pro golfer. He even had a poster to prove it.

Kerr eventually told the class from Clara Barton Elementary in Long Beach he was a former U.S. Olympic water polo goalie.

Students stared oddly at the 32-year-old. Most of them had no idea about the game of water polo. Where do you play it, in your home’s tub, or the Pacific Ocean?

Kerr, dressed in business attire, put on his tight red cap with the No. 1 on it.

“I have 60% of my uniform on,” Kerr told the class, which didn’t know what to expect next.

Those who understood the rest of a water polo’s required uniform were glad Kerr didn’t take his slacks off.

No Speedo.

The former UC Irvine standout exposed a lot more, in a figurative sense.

Kerr talked about his childhood, stressed the importance of academics, his Olympic dreams, and also the pitfalls from taking performance-enhancing drugs.

Jorden Hampton, 8, was captivated by Kerr. It didn’t matter that the last time the third-grader saw a yellow ball like the one Kerr played with was during recess while playing tetherball.

Like many of the students at the museum, Hampton saw someone who looks like him, someone who’s African-American, a role model to look up to in Kerr.

The Daily Pilot caught up with Kerr after he signed dozens of autographs for kids, who were close to waist high when they gave Kerr a sheet, or their shirt for him to sign.

Question: Why do you come out and talk to kids?

Answer: My passion is to be able give back to kids. Most of my family members are in education, so I’m always around younger kids. They’re so easily influenced at this age, so it’s nice to be able to be a part of their influence in life. For me, sports and academics, were the great focus and [activities] of my childhood. Being able to share my experiences is amazing. I happen to be very fortunate that I had a good story that enabled me to succeed all the way to the Olympics.

From a young age, I had such great role models and coaches and teachers that ... I’ve always wanted to become a teacher.

Q: Does anybody think you’re a water polo player?

A: Nobody really thinks I play water polo, even adults. Their first is guess is always basketball or football.

Q: Why don’t people recognize you?

A: Water polo is not as televised in the U.S. as it is in European countries. The stereotype of a basketball player is someone who’s a lot taller than obviously a water polo player. But in fact, I’m about average on my team. There are a lot of guys that are over 6-5 and 6-6.

Q: What attracted you to the sport?

A: I’d been playing football in the fall and I injured my knee, so I was just looking for something to fill the fall season in my sophomore year [at Chula Vista High], pretty much the offseason training to get me back in shape for basketball.

Q: How was the transition to water polo?

A: It was extremely difficult. I didn’t know how to egg-beater, so I was doing a breaststroke kick. I was bouncing up and down the water like a buoy. It took me quite some time to actually be able to become balanced. When I coach water polo camps now, that’s the main thing that I focus on is balance in the water. It’s the equivalent to hopping up and down the basketball court with your feet together.

Q: When did you realize you could become a U.S. Olympic water polo player?

A: In 1995, I played on the junior national team. I was captain of a tournament in Canada. That’s the point that I first realized that I believed in myself that I could potentially succeed playing at the Olympic level.

Q: Did you ever doubt yourself?

A: Of course. I thought I had too late of a start and people were too far ahead me. I started playing with the Olympic team in 1998 and I was cut from the 2000 team in Sydney. I was very discouraged.

A new coach came in and he didn’t know how hard I’d worked the two years previous, so I had to prove myself all over again. I started from scratch and became the starting goalie in 2001.

Q: Someone in the room said you didn’t look like the typical water polo player. How were you viewed?

A: I didn’t really have too many negative experiences. A kind of fun experience, my first international tournament in Europe, a Greek coach waited until I walked about five feet past him, and he turns to my coach and goes, “He’s black.” [He was] completely shocked.

I was actually really well received. I remember my first tournament in Italy [in 2001], we’re down in Sicily and I had dreadlocks at the time. They were cheering for Italy, but then when I would make a block, they would start singing Bob Marley songs.

Q: How were you able to make the 2004 U.S. Olympic team after failing to do so in 2000?

A: Work ethic. We had a European coach [Ratko Rudic] that came in from Croatia, or the former Yugoslavia, a lot of history, his Yugoslavian team had beaten the [U.S.] Olympic team in two gold medal matches, in ’84 and ’88. Then he went to coach in Italy and became successful. He came to the U.S. and knew nothing about our team. Everybody had to prove themselves. That was the first time I felt that there were no politics involved.

Q: You feel there is too much politics involved in the U.S. Olympic team selection process?

A: I think it’s difficult to take out preexisting relationships in any situation.

Q: You make the team for the 2004 Athens Games. Did you feel you were on top of the world?

A: Athens is absolutely amazing because of the history of the Olympics of going back to where it all started.

Q: What do you remember the most from the experience?

A: For me, honestly, one of my favorite things was the cafeteria. Not because of the food, but because of the people. I would talk to Yao Ming. I would talk to Rulon Gardner. The way the village is set up is like a gated community, but each building is a different country. You feel like you’re walking a block, but you’re walking from one continent to the next continent.

Q: You brought a water polo ball to show the kids the 50-plus autographs you got in Athens. Which big-name athletes signed it?

A: Rulon Gardner, Amanda Beard, Yao Ming.

Q: Were you disappointed with the U.S. team’s showing at the Athens Games.

A: We finished seventh. Extremely disappointing. We were in a bracket with the gold, silver and bronze medal teams and we got knocked out in the preliminary rounds by the Hungarians, who went out to win the Olympics.

Q: After making the U.S. team in 2004, did you think you would be on the team for the 2008 Beijing Games.

A: I thought for sure after I [helped the team win] the Pan American Games in 2007 and [we] qualified for the Olympics.

Q: You made it as an alternate. Were you disappointed you weren’t one of the two goalies on the team?

A: I can’t really place the [right] word. It wasn’t like [a] shocked [feeling]. I definitely felt like I was a major part of the team. Every one of the players on the team still recognizes my commitment to the team just as much, if not more than anybody else on the team.

The team did amazing [by attaining the silver]. I think the team was as close to being compared to the Miracle on Ice [U.S. hockey] team [if it had upset Hungary in the championship]. Nobody expected the team to medal with the competition and with the turmoil we had during the Olympic cycle. We basically had five coaches in four years.

Q: Did you receive a silver medal?

A: Alternates do not get medals.

Q: How difficult was that?

A: It was and it is. But that was overshadowed by how happy I was for our team.

Q: What have you been up to since returning to the states from Beijing?

A: I started my own company [Optimum Point in Newport Beach with Michael Galindo]. We actually help other companies save money and we also work with nonprofits, helping their sponsors save money.

Q: What message did you want to convey to the kids?

A: The importance of hard work in school. I want kids to know that they don’t have to go to the Olympics. They don’t have to compete in college [athletics]. But they do have to compete at whatever level currently in life.

Q: You said you were a member of the United State Anti-Doping Agency. You brought up steroids to the kids. Why did you?

A: The reason that I brought up steroids is because kids are aware, through the media, that there are performing-enhancing drugs. I wanted explain to them first hand … the dangers of steroids, not just physically and mentally, but also to their reputation and to sports in general. The quote that I have on [a USADA] poster that’s in schools and organizations nationwide is, “You train your whole life to compete against other athletes, not drugs.”

Q: Do water polo players take steroids?

A: No U.S. Olympic water polo athlete has ever been tested positive for steroids. Internationally, several of the European countries have been caught using steroids.

It’s completely frustrating at times when you compete against someone who you think possibly could be using steroids and has some advantages, but in the long run I’m much happier knowing that I competed my entire career and my team has competed my entire career with the highest integrity.

Q: You’ve met U.S. Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. What’s your take on Phelps getting caught smoking marijuana in a published photo?

A: It’s a shame that he got into a situation where he has so many people looking up to him as a role model.

Q: You felt Phelps let people down?

A: Unfortunately, yes, because that’s just how [we’re] put [to] a level of such high standards.

Q: Have you ever found yourself in a situation like Phelps’?

A: I’ve never been in a predicament like that. My entire life I’ve tried to be a good role model for my younger sisters. It’s become completely natural to continue to being a role model for younger athletes.

Q: Should athletes really be role models?

A: I definitely feel athletes should be role models because that’s the position that our society has put them in.

Q: Since you were a founding faculty member at Sage Hill School in 2000 and started the water polo program at the school, are you surprised the school didn’t have a girls’ team this season?

A: Unfortunately, we didn’t have the numbers to field a women’s team. I think a lot of that is due to the fact that unfortunately they haven’t been able to have a swimming pool on campus. Eventually they will build a pool.

DAVID CARRILLO PEÑALOZA may be reached at (714) 966-4612 or at david.carrillo@latimes.com.