Nobody plays games like UCLA. As of this writing, the university’s Athletics Hall of Fame contained 97 NCAA team championship trophies — the most of any school in America — and the 2005–’06 season may very well be the one in which that magical 100th title is won. It’s an eminently realistic expectation, given yet another potent recruiting run by UCLA coaches.
Joining the current crop of outstanding players in Westwood this year are about 125 talented newcomers, in sports ranging from football to swimming & diving. Among them: five freshman “ones to watch” in 2005–’06: a volleyball player, a gymnast, a golfer and two basketball players, male and female. Like all of their new teammates, these athletes have already attained top honors at their high schools or in amateur play, and all are former or current members of national teams. But already, they’re poster kids for the kind of wide-ranging intelligence UCLA both fosters and attracts. Each member of this standout quintet brings a little something extra besides sheer physical ability to the campus: a game plan for life that includes a presidency; a passion for philosophy; a résumé that includes an actor’s head shots; an All-American work ethic; and an admirable desire to put learning above earning.
Plans that go way beyond sports
No one would disagree that playing for the UCLA men’s basketball team is one of the most pressure-filled situations for a student-athlete, but you’d never know it from talking to Alfred Aboya. Easygoing, soft-spoken and thoroughly composed, the 20-year-old native of Yaounde, Cameroon, is not just one of five UCLA freshmen considered among the top 100 prep players in North America last season. He’s also got quite a game plan for his life. Hint: It involves running a country.
First, of course, there’s the basketball. An impressive 6’8” and 242 pounds, Aboya (full name: Aboya Baliaba Alfred Roland) is vying for the power forward position recently vacated by Dijon Thompson. Although slowed by arthroscopic surgery last fall, Aboya has high hopes for his debut season.
From the moment he began recruiting him out of the Tilton School in New Hampshire, Coach Ben Howland knew that Aboya was a true find. “I think he has good leadership qualities,” Howland says. “He’s very mature.” And by his own admission, very coachable. “I’m here to learn how to play,” the young man says modestly. “The coaches are here to teach me, so whatever they ask me to do, I will do.”
And he doesn’t lack for athletic ambition. “There are no guarantees in life,” Aboya declares. “The NBA is just a possibility, and if that turns out to be the best thing for me, my family and the people around me, I will go for it.”
But Aboya’s got a road map that goes way beyond basketball. Smart and ambitious, he speaks several languages besides English, including French, German and a number of Cameroonian dialects. The languages should help him in his pursuit of a degree in political science with an emphasis on international relations. “My goal is to run my country,” he says, smiling. “President Aboya. Doesn’t that sound great?”
Swinging the club since age 11
After Jane Park won the prestigious U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship in 2004, many felt sure she’d turn pro. After all, Park, now 18, is a member of a rising class of teenagers who are giving the professionals a run for their money. But this is no go-for-the-green, golfing-machine teen. Park’s focus is the flesh-and-blood equivalent of a laser, and it’s trained on education before competition.
What the rest of the country didn’t know in 2004 was that Park had paid an unofficial visit to UCLA the year before, at which time she confided to Coach Carrie Forsyth ’94 that she really wanted to go to college. So Forsyth continued to recruit her.
“In spite of the whirlwind that was going on around her, I knew that Jane was committed to college,” Forsyth says. “There were a lot of people who were surprised [she made that choice], but she’s glad she did, and I’m glad she did!”
Park’s father, Byung, who served as her coach throughout most of her career, says his daughter’s interest in golf started at age 11, when she tagged along on a trip to the driving range. Bored, she asked her father if she could hit some balls.
“Soon she was swinging the club, and she hit the ball straight, about 150 yards,” Byung says. “So I gave her another one. She hit about 20 balls and, unbelievably, she’s hitting them straight, about 70 percent. I was shocked.”
Park didn’t join the golf team at any of her three high schools (Beaumont High School, Holy Family High School and Rancho Cucamonga High School, all in California), choosing instead to travel the junior and amateur circuits with her father. This has made her adjustment to college life a little bit more difficult than it is for most freshmen. “I just want to be consistent on the golf course, and to try to adapt to this new life,” Park says. “Just the physical aspect of my dad not being here — it’s going to take a little while to get used to. But [Coach Forsyth] is a very, very, very good coach. Very positive.”
Philosopher and outside hitter
Signing yet another top recruiting class made last year’s NCAA championship loss to Pepperdine University a little bit easier to swallow for men’s volleyball Coach Al Scates ’61, M.S. ’62. He’s expecting great things this season from all 11 of his freshman players, especially outside hitter Sean O’Malley from Oak Park, Ill., an athlete whose brawn is tempered by his interest in that most brainy of subjects, philosophy.
Lean and lanky, and equipped with a dry wit, O’Malley, 18, chose UCLA not only for its superior volleyball program, but also for its excellent philosophy department.
He takes a conceptual thinker’s approach to his sport. For example, he sees the value in Scates’ competitive system, in which the best players practice on the first court and the rest of the team is relegated to the second court, behind the infamous blue curtain.
“Sean had a phenomenal career at Oak Park and River Forest High School, and he broke all the high school hitting records there,” Scates says. “He’s 6’9” with a great vertical jump. He’ll be one of the tallest freshman hitters we’ve ever had. He’ll be one of the tallest players we’ve ever had. He’s probably still growing.”
O’Malley gets his height from his parents, but his interest in volleyball was sparked by his older brother, Trevor, who would bring 10-year-old Sean along to watch him play beach volleyball. The youngster was hooked, and by the seventh grade O’Malley was playing on his junior high school team. By the eighth grade he had a regular routine: He would go to Oak Park and River Forest High School to train with the JV team from 6–8 a.m.; go back to his junior high school to start his classes at 9; then rush back to the high school in the afternoon to practice with the freshman team.
His hard work paid off and late in his freshman year, O’Malley was elevated to the varsity team. Three years later, he had amassed 1,399 kills, becoming Illinois’ all-time career kill leader. In between, he squeezed in playing time on the U.S. Youth and Junior National Teams.
Now he’s stretching limbs and mind at UCLA. “The competition in the volleyball program breeds success,” the young philosopher says. “Even when the magazines come out and say, ‘Oh, UCLA won’t be that good this year,’ they’re always eating their words by the end of the season.”
Deceptively powerful
Fresh off her sixth-place finish in the all-around standings at the 2005 U.S.A. Gymnastics Championships, which earned her a spot on the U.S. National Team for the third time in her career, Kristina Comforte arrived at UCLA in September, ready to compete. This is a young woman who virtually defines the concept of work ethic.
“She came in in better shape than anybody on the team because she had just finished competing in the biggest meet in the country,” says Coach Valorie Kondos Field ’87. “I told her she was going to be pushed really hard with conditioning, along with the rest of the team. And she had no problem with that. She’s a real team player.”
Blonde and sinewy, 18-year-old Comforte is “deceptively powerful and mellifluous in her movement,” says her coach. “I expect her to make her mark as one of the best female collegiate athletes — not just gymnasts — in the country.”
Born in Hinsdale, Ill., Comforte (pronounced kum-FOR-tee) got her first taste of gymnastics at age 5 in a local park district program and joined a high school program for younger girls at age 7. She spent two years at a private club, Premier Gymnastics, before being accepted at the Illinois Gymnastics Institute, known for training the best elite gymnasts in the state. By the time Comforte reached her senior year at Lyons Township High School in Burr Ridge, she was wavering between UCLA and the University of Michigan, which had the geographical edge.
But a home visit by Kondos Field turned things completely around. The gymnast and her parents “fell in love” with the coach, Comforte says. And when Comforte took an unofficial visit to UCLA that summer, she fell in love with the campus as well.
“I won’t be competing for the U.S. with the national team, because I’m here,” she says. “I’m done with that part of gymnastics and am ready for college. Gymnastics is a very individual sport, but in college, everybody pulls for each other. It’s more fun.”
