Sports
Forged in triumph and tragedy, UCLA's Adam Krikorian keeps Olympic loss in perspective
All things being equal, Adam Krikorian would rather win than lose.
“It is much easier,” he said.
And Krikorian would know since he’s won a lot, capturing 15 national championships as a water polo player and coach at UCLA and 24 world and Olympic titles as coach of the U.S. women’s team.
But if winning is easier, losing, Krikorian believes, is more revealing.
“Adversity is a test of character more than anything,” he said. “It’s easy to be the person you aspire to be when you’re winning and when you’re having success. Trying to be that person when you’re not at the top of the mountain is a much more difficult thing to do.
“Much more honorable as well.”
That philosophy was put to the test on the biggest stage and under some of the cruelest circumstances of Krikorian’s career last month at the Paris Olympics. The U.S. women, heavily favored to win an unprecedented fourth consecutive gold medal, lost their last two games despite trailing for just one second of those final 64 minutes.
In the blink of an eye, the team had gone from a spot on the medal podium to leaving the Summer Games empty-handed for the first time. Years of sacrifice, dedication and training had gone unrewarded.
“A lot of tears,” Krikorian said of the moment. “The feelings and emotions are endless. There’s anger, there’s frustration, there’s a ton of sadness.”
U.S. women’s water polo coach walks past his players during a preliminary match against Spain on July 29.
(Luca Bruno / Associated Press)
“One of my goals when I started coaching was to inspire people, to be someone that could bring the best out of others.”
— Adam Krikorian
But there was also opportunity because Krikorian has never seen himself as just a coach. He’s also a leader. And that’s exactly what the 13 sobbing women gathered around him on the pool deck needed.
So they closed ranks, took responsibility and, through the tears, saluted the women who beat them. Winning isn’t always about the final score; sometimes it’s how you react to that result.
“This is what life is; the reality of life,” he said then. “You don’t stand on top of the podium every single time. We lost to a better team. In these heartbreaking moments, you’ve got to learn from it. You’ve got to put it in perspective.”
Krikorian’s approach has become rare. That makes the lessons he’s teaching of grace, sportsmanship and humility even more important, said Richard Lapchick, president of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida.
“In an era when ethics and values are often forgotten in the pursuit of victory, Coach Krikorian told his team that they had an opportunity to show greatness in defeat. He told him to show their character and the players followed their coach. He told them that they could rise above the loss and show that it was OK to lose as long as you play hard and show class in defeat,” Lapchick said. “Hopefully, all of his players will remember that lesson as they go through life after sports.”
Like the fictional soccer coach Ted Lasso, Krikorian speaks in inspirational aphorisms as often as he does in complete sentences and many of those maxims come from John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach and Krikorian’s mentor, who also put character above victory.
“He’s got this great quote,” Krikorian begins before reciting one of Wooden’s favorite lessons.
No written word nor spoken plea can teach our youth what they should be. Nor all the books on all the shelves. It’s what the teachers are themselves.
“One of my goals when I started coaching was to inspire people, to be someone that could bring the best out of others,” Krikorian continued. “And I have a set of values that I try to follow. When you have those things that are your guiding light, it makes it pretty easy.”
Goalie Ashleigh Johnson, a three-time Olympian, said the U.S. team has long fed off Krikorian’s convictions.
“Adam’s leadership shines through,” said Johnson, a two-time gold medalist and winner of multiple world championships.
“We have a lot of discussions about perspective, about what we want, where we want to go. And a lot of that isn’t just how we want to be seen as athletes, how we want to be as people and who we represent. Just realizing we’re getting to have fun for our career, not many people get to do that. So even the disappointing moments are things that you face with perspective and joy.”
Krikorian learned about perspective the hard way. The coach saw his brother, Blake, die of a heart attack at 48, just before the start of the 2016 Rio Games, and his father, Gary, at 81, two months before the Tokyo Olympics. He also lost four of his college teammates and one of his UCLA players at young ages.
Jim Toring was 23 when he was hit by a bus in Paris on a national team trip. Brett Stern was 31 when he was killed in a car accident in Irvine. Brian Bent died of sleep apnea at 29 and Terry Baker of cancer at 43. Marco Santos, whom Krikorian coached to a national team, died of ALS three weeks shy of his 29th birthday.
If anyone had reason to be bitter about fate it was Krikorian. But he channeled that grief in a different direction.
“It just made me — I can’t explain why — appreciate my life even more,” said Krikorian, who keeps a journal and talks regularly with Peter Haberl, the team’s sports psychologist. “I’m grateful for all that I have and the health and the life I’ve been able to live.”
U.S. women’s water polo coach Adam Krikorian celebrates with his players after the team’s gold-medal win over Spain at the Tokyo Olympic Games in August 2021.
(Gary Ambrose / For the Times)
His players have had their perspective tested as well. In the lead-up to this summer’s Olympics, team leader Maddie Musselman learned her husband, Patrick Woepse, had stage 4 lung cancer. Then days before the opening ceremony, Lulu Conner, the sister-in-law of U.S. captain Maggie Steffens, suffered a fatal medical emergency in Paris.
Before that three players survived a deadly shooting at a country music festival in Las Vegas, another narrowly escaped a terrorist bombing in a Belgian train station and two more were injured in a balcony collapse at a hotel in South Korea.
Given those real-life tragedies, it was easy for Krikorian and his players to look at what happened in the pool in Paris — where the U.S. lost its semifinal to Australia in a penalty shootout, then fell to the Netherlands in the bronze-medal match on a goal in the final second — as just games.
And in every game, there’s a winner and a loser.
A couple of weeks after returning from Paris, over a late breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon at a cafe near his South Bay home, Krikorian acknowledged the two losses still haunt him. But he continues to embrace the lessons of those losses.
“Success in life is usually defined by not how you respond to the wins but how you respond to the losses and how you deal with adversity,” he said.
“I would love, as we all would, not to have to deal with adversity. But it’s a reminder that it’s just part of life. There’s an acronym, FEAR, that I heard once. It’s either Fear Everything And Run or Face Everything And Rise. That’s my choice.”
Krikorian didn’t learn that from Wooden. That perspective, he said, came from life experiences as well as from his father, who played football at Occidental with future NFL coach Jim Mora and future AFL champion quarterback Jack Kemp.
“I’m 50 years old, so I’d like to think I’ve matured,” Krikorian said. “I don’t know if I had the same perspective when I was 20. I’m a product of my parents, understanding kind of where this whole thing fits in life. And I think about my father quite a bit.
“The one thing that he was always instilling in us as children was just to be able to handle defeat in a classy way. So for me, in some ways, it’s about honoring my father.”
Krikorian’s two children — Annabel, a 15-year-old track athlete at Mira Costa High and Jack, an 18-year-old swimmer — have also adopted their grandfather’s philosophy about sportsmanship.
“I’m always impressed with how encouraging and respectful my son is, complimenting even his biggest rivals,” Krikorian said. “Always shaking hands and wishing them luck. I think it catches some kids off guard at times.”
With the L.A. Games four years away, Krikorian’s future with the U.S. team remains uncertain. He nearly stepped down after winning a third straight gold medal in Tokyo but now acknowledges he’s excited about the possibility of coaching in the Olympics in his adopted hometown.
It’s unclear if Adam Krikorian will be coaching the U.S. women’s water polo team at the Los Angeles Summer Olympic Games in 2028.
(Luca Bruno / Associated Press)
The decision, however, may not be his. Jamie Davis, the CEO of USA volleyball the past eight years, will assume a similar role with USA Water Polo on Oct. 1, replacing Christopher Ramsey, the man who first hired Krikorian out of UCLA in 2009.
Given the tragic history that has surrounded Krikorian’s teams, however, the coach said he’s questioned the wisdom of returning.
“This sounds ridiculous, but it’s like I don’t want to coach in 2028 because I’m fearful of someone else dying,” he said. “It’s an irrational thought to have but it’s a thought that’s come up.”
Johnson, who became the only Black woman to play on a U.S. Olympic water polo team when Krikorian named her to the roster in 2016, said the program would be different without him.
“I love playing under Adam,” said Johnson, the most decorated goalkeeper in women’s water polo history.
“The attitude that you see and the wins, the successes that we’ve had, the development that you’ve seen, is a reflection of Adam’s influence on us. I’m sure he’s influenced a lot of people. The empathy, the leadership, he’s definitely transformed this program for the better.”
And those last things, not the wins and the titles, are what Krikorian wants to be remembered for.
“A lot of people, when they introduce me to friends, they introduce me as, ‘Oh this guy is a three-time gold medalist and he won 15 national championships at UCLA’,” Krikorian said. “Although it makes me feel good as I appreciate it, there’s always been a part of that that’s been slightly annoying. I don’t want anything that has to do with water polo on my tombstone. That’s not how I wanted to be remembered.
“Ultimately, you’re judged on who you are as a person.”
GLENDALE, Ariz. — The look on Zygi Wilf’s face said it all. It was as if the Minnesota Vikings owner and chairman had just watched a horror movie with a gutting ending. He exited the locker room, stood for a few seconds and stared blankly at the crowd of people in front of him. His son, Jonathan, pointed him toward a long hallway. And off he went slowly into another offseason.
How did this end so abruptly? How did a 14-win Vikings team oscillate so quickly from being a potential No. 1 seed to losing in the wild-card round? Wilf’s mind turned with questions such as these.
None of them, though, were as confounding as this one: What happened to quarterback Sam Darnold?
Two weeks ago, Darnold’s Vikings teammates were dousing him with water bottles as part of a locker-room celebration following a win at U.S. Bank Stadium. Now, here they were Monday night at State Farm Stadium, zipping up their suitcases and heading for the buses after a brutal 27-9 loss to the underdog Los Angeles Rams.
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The dichotomy between the two scenes was as stark as it was disorienting. In the first snapshot, the 27-year-old Darnold seemed to have completed a career transformation and galvanized an organization in the process. In the second, it felt fair to wonder how much of Darnold’s impressive play this season was a mirage.
“I think it’s very important we all think about Sam’s body of work,” Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell said postgame. “It did not work out in the end, and I think Sam would be the first one to tell you (he could have played better).”
After a loss like this one, there are typically multiple culprits. The offensive line is another obvious one for Minnesota. The Rams sacked Darnold nine times, tying an NFL playoff record. Furthermore, 12 Rams defenders generated at least one pressure, according to Next Gen Stats, their most in a game since Week 6 in 2021.
Hoecht throws up the “LA” after the Rams latest sack
📺: #MINvsLAR on ESPN/ABC
📱: Stream on @NFLPlus and ESPN+ pic.twitter.com/iWM1Pofp0U— NFL (@NFL) January 14, 2025
Allocating cap space and draft capital to interior offensive linemen will be a priority this offseason. O’Connell suggested as much Monday night.
Still, that concern pales in comparison to the importance of what happens at quarterback — and what that means for everything else — which is why Darnold’s drop-off over the last two weeks is so jarring.
After playing well enough over the first 16 games to lead the Vikings to a 14-2 record and legitimately be in the conversation for NFL MVP, Darnold struggled mightily in the regular-season finale, a 31-9 loss in Detroit. Against the Lions, he completed just 18 of 41 passes for 166 yards, posting his third-worst passer rating (55.5) and his highest bad-throw percentage of the season (34.2).
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Did Vikings’ struggles against Lions show a blueprint for how to slow down Sam Darnold?
Those troubles continued against the Rams. His numbers — 25-for-40 passing for 245 yards, a touchdown and an interception — belied Darnold’s level of comfort. He misplaced multiple throws. Darnold, who so often this season had been pinpoint accurate, threw behind his receivers. He spun out of the pocket but failed to get the ball off. His eyes often scanned from right to left too quickly. His feet swiveled back and forth constantly. He tried to evade pass rushers, who engulfed him almost every time.
Darnold’s system malfunctioned in almost every regard. When it wasn’t his vision, it was his footwork. When it wasn’t his vision or his footwork, it was his arm.
“Left too many throws out there that I would usually make,” he said afterward.
Had he said that earlier in his career in New York or Carolina, some might have laughed. But this season, while entrusted in O’Connell’s scheme and developmental process, he proved over a meaningful sample size that he could progress in rhythm, deliver the football accurately and withstand pressure.
Darnold had also displayed resilience, navigating a difficult midseason stretch against the Colts and Jaguars during which he threw five interceptions. The way he responded to those tough film sessions, throwing 18 touchdowns and two interceptions in the ensuing seven games, showed just what he was capable of.
In late December, The Athletic’s Dianna Russini reported, “After conversations with a team source, one thing is clear: The Vikings want Darnold back in Minnesota for 2025.” Separately, another Vikings staffer texted, “I hope we can keep him.” Darnold’s MVP odds climbed. Against the Packers in the team’s final home game of the season, he completed 33 of 43 passes for 377 yards, three touchdowns and an interception and was soaked by teammates afterward in the locker room.
The Sam Darnold experience continues. pic.twitter.com/k5db9DYdtp
— Alec Lewis (@alec_lewis) December 30, 2024
This 2024 Vikings season, billed as a transition year toward a more flexible future around rookie quarterback J.J. McCarthy, had exceeded even the rosiest expectations.
“Outside of these walls, nobody really believed in him,” running back Aaron Jones said of Darnold at the time. “Nobody gave him a chance. But he’s proving everybody wrong.”
That was the crescendo, a byproduct of an infrastructure optimized in Darnold’s image. At the time, the Vikings staff reiterated the role that rhythm and timing played in Darnold’s success and how important it was for his feet and eyes to sync.
Buried in the jargon was an important reality: Darnold trusted the play calls and reads so much that it was more about sticking to a specific timing than observing the field and making decisions based on what he saw. The best way to sum up his struggles in Detroit and Arizona was an interruption in timing. Both the Lions and Rams affected Darnold’s ability to climb up in the pocket, and both teams mixed in countless stunts and exotic pressures to keep Darnold from being comfortable, assessing the picture downfield and throwing.
There were numerous examples from Monday night. Early in the second quarter, Darnold dropped back and eyed the right sideline. Rams defensive lineman Braden Fiske pushed Vikings left guard Blake Brandel toward Darnold, who side-stepped and kept his eyes on receiver Jordan Addison, while receiver Jalen Nailor was open crossing the field. Darnold hurled a pass in Addison’s direction. But the ball was late and behind Addison, and it was intercepted by Rams cornerback Cobie Durant.
Later in the quarter, the Rams blitzed safety Quentin Lake from depth. He squeaked past right guard Dalton Risner, forcing Darnold to step up and move his vision from right to left. Uncertain with what he was seeing, he looked back to his right. But before he could release the ball, another blitzer, Rams cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon, speared him in the back. Darnold fumbled, and Rams edge rusher Jared Verse recovered and rumbled 57 yards for a touchdown, extending Los Angeles’ lead.
JARED VERSE SCOOP AND SCORE!
📺: #MINvsLAR on ESPN/ABC
📱: Stream on @NFLPlus and ESPN+ pic.twitter.com/bXLHmOUaQW— NFL (@NFL) January 14, 2025
“There are some examples where, when you go back and watch the tape in an air-conditioned room tomorrow, it’s going to feel like, ‘Man, why didn’t I just do this or that?’” O’Connell said. “But it’s hard in the moment. It’s hard with how fast things happen out there.”
Good quarterbacks have the arm and the athleticism, especially in the modern NFL, but the mind is what separates the top-tier QBs. Matthew Stafford’s operating capacity on the other side of the field validated this, and Monday night substantiated a popular opinion regarding the Vikings’ future: Franchise-tagging or extending Darnold, who is set to become a free agent, does not make sense with the team’s needs elsewhere, especially on the interior of the offensive line.
Moving on from Darnold would, of course, raise questions. How ready is McCarthy? Which veteran option might the Vikings pair with McCarthy? And how would O’Connell feel about having to build up an entirely new quarterback option?
These are vastly different questions from the ones on Wilf’s mind as he wound his way through the bowels of the stadium Monday night. But they’ll soon be on his plate following a wildly successful season that ended in a disappointing flash, a roller-coaster ride for a quarterback who could not polish off the progress he’d built.
(Photo: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)
Sports
Daniil Medvedev smashes racket, camera during fiery outburst as he avoids Australian Open upset
Top-ranked tennis pro Daniil Medvedev destroyed a camera and his tennis racket as he faced what could have been a monumental upset in the Australian Open by a wild-card entry ranked 418th in the first round of the Grand Slam tournament on Tuesday.
Medvedev’s outburst came during the third set when he lost a 13-stroke back-and-forth with Thailand’s Kasidit Samrej to fall behind 40-15. With Medvedev up at the net, Samrej’s shot clipped the net to go beyond Medvedev’s reach in a direction he clearly could not have anticipated.
Daniil Medvedev reacts during his first-round match against Kasidit Samrej at the Australian Open in Melbourne, Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
Then Medvedev, a three-time Australian Open finalist, unleashed his anger on the net, smashing his racket several times.
In the process, Medvedev destroyed his racket and a camera that was situated directly in his path of destruction.
Staff quickly rushed to replace the broken camera and clean up the debris on the court. Medvedev was given a code violation warning for racket abuse from the chair umpire.
Daniil Medvedev smashes a TV net camera with his racket as he has lost the third set against Kasidit Samrej in the men’s singles first-round match at Australian Open on Jan. 14, 2025. (Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)
COCO GAUFF DELIVERS 6-WORD MESSAGE FOR THOSE DEALING WITH LA WILDFIRES AFTER AUSTRALIAN OPEN WIN
Medvedev dropped the set to trail 2-1, and it looked as though the No. 5 ranked player would face elimination. But Medvedev quickly turned things around to win the following two sets 6-1, 6-2, and advanced to the second round.
“In the end of last year, this match, I probably would have lost it,” Medvedev said after the match. “New year, new energy.”
Daniil Medvedev’s outburst came during the third set when he lost a 13-stroke back-and-forth with Thailand’s Kasidit Samrej. (Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)
Medvedev is hoping to start out the 2025 season with a win in Melbourne. A three-time finalist, including in last year’s tournament, Medvedev has never won the Australian Open. His biggest challenger will be Novak Djokovic, who has won the most Australian Open titles than any other men’s player with 10.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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The California Interscholastic Federation is preparing this week to send out a form to the 10 section commissioners that would simplify transfer rules for families displaced because of the fires in Southern California, executive director Ron Nocetti said Tuesday.
The sections will make the transfer waiver form available to individual schools to complete, which would allow immediate athletic eligibility for individuals who lost their homes or were displaced.
“It’s a waiver from the normal transfer process, which could take quite a few days,” Nocetti said. “We allow administrators to make the judgment, ‘Yes, the student is here because of the fire, and yes, they can participate.’ We’re going to make it simple. This is the last thing we want families to worry about.”
Hundreds of homes have been damaged or destroyed in the Palisades fire and Eaton fire. The disruption will lead to tough family decisions about where to stay and where to move. Teenagers involved in athletics might have to switch schools.
This isn’t the first time the CIF has created provisions in its transfer rules for displaced families. When Hurricane Katrina caused extensive damage in Louisiana and Texas in 2005, the CIF created a similar waiver for families that moved to California.
Normal transfer rules require families to submit extensive information, such as utility bills, to establish residency. The new form will help expedite the paperwork.
This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.
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