By Greg Uptain | Special to the Post-Dispatch

SLUH adds to trophy collection

De Smet’s magical run ends

Fast start for Jr. Bills

No quit in De Smet

Defensive end shines

SLUH’s whirlwind week

Missouri Water Polo boys district championship: SLUH 11, De Smet 4

GENEVA, OH – The Johns Hopkins men’s outdoor track and field team kicked off competition Thursday on Day One of the 2025 NCAA Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championships, with junior Connor Oiler as the team’s sole competitor.
 
Oiler posted a time of 9:02.00 in the 3000-meter steeplechase but did not advance to Friday’s final.
 
The Blue Jays will be back in action on Saturday for the final day of the championships. Oluwademilade Adeniran is set to compete in the triple jump at 11 a.m., aiming for a podium finish. Later in the day, Emmanuel Leblond will take to the track in the 5000-meter run at 4 p.m., with hopes of capturing a national title.
 

San Francisco, CA – May 22 – The Olympic Club has announced the women’s finalists for the Peter J. Cutino Award, an iconic honor in NCAA water polo to recognize the best men’s and women’s players each year. The women’s finalists are Emily Ausmus (USC), Tilly Kearns (USC), and Ryann Neushul (Stanford).

Emily Ausmus was named MPSF Newcomer of the Year and a member of the All-MPSF First Team. The freshman attacker scored in all 34 games for USC to become the fastest Trojan to reach the 100-goal mark on her way to setting a school single-season record with 114 goals. Ausmus also handed out 55 assists, stole the ball 46 times, and went 28-2 on sprints this season. En route to the NCAA Championship game, she scored three goals with two assists and two steals in the national quarterfinal against Harvard.

Tilly Kearns became a three-time All-MPSF First Team honoree this season for USC. The redshirt senior center scored 100 goals and finishes her career ranked third all-time in scoring for the Trojans with 262 goals. In addition to the scoring, Kearns earned 62 exclusions and notched 48 steals on the year. She earned NCAA All-Tournament First Team honors and was instrumental in propelling USC to the NCAA Championship game by scoring five goals and earning six exclusions in the national semifinal against UCLA.

Ryann Neushul was named MPSF Player of the Year and won the NCAA Championship this season with Stanford. The redshirt senior attacker scored 60 goals to push her career total to 228 which stands in fifth place all-time for the Cardinal. She claimed NCAA All-Tournament First Team honors after five goals, four assists, two blocks, and two steals throughout the run to a title. Neushul finishes her career as Stanford’s only four-time NCAA Champion as well as a four-time NCAA All-Tournament Team member and four-time All-MPSF Team selection.

The men’s finalists were announced previously and include Ryder Dodd (UCLA), Max Miller (USC), and Mihailo Vukazic (University of the Pacific).

The Cutino Awards will take place on the evening of Saturday, June 7 at The Olympic Club in San Francisco. The ceremony will be live streamed at Overnght.com. The broadcast will feature interviews with finalists, athletes, coaches plus the Cutino Award ceremony in its entirety. Those interested in attending the awards can register by clicking here.

Established in 1999 by The Olympic Club, the Cutino Award is given annually to the top men’s and women’s NCAA Division I water polo players as voted on by coaches from across the country. The namesake of the award is a legend in United States water polo history, with eight NCAA titles as head coach at Cal. The Olympic Club has a long and distinguished competitive water polo history, a tradition that continues today in the pool with some of the best age-group teams in the world.

ABOUT THE OLYMPIC CLUB

Founded in 1860, The Olympic Club enjoys the distinction of being among the oldest athletic clubs in America. Since its birth, The Olympic Club has fostered amateur athletics in San Francisco. The Winged “O” currently fields teams in 17 sports. Additionally, The Olympic Club has hosted five U.S. Opens, and looks forward to hosting the 2028 PGA Championship and 2032 Ryder Cup at its world-class Lakeside Clubhouse golf courses.

 

Nikola Stamenić wasn’t just a coach. He was a water polo “philosopher”, a teacher who turned the raw energy of water polo into mathematical precision and artistic expression. For more than four decades, Stamenić shaped generations of athletes, inspiring them with his knowledge, but above all with his ethos, down-to-earth ways, and dedication to his craft.

Born in Belgrade in 1949, he played for Partizan and the Yugoslavian national team, with whom he won the silver medal at the 1972 Munich Olympics. But it was the next stage of his career—coaching—that would make him a water polo legend. As a coach, he won gold at the 1988 Seoul Olympics (1988), turning the Yugoslav national team into an unstoppable machine.

And he would go on to leave an indelible mark on Greek polo, too. Taking charge of Olympiacos in the late 1990s, he transformed the Piraeus team into European champions (the Reds reached the final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup) and laid the foundations for their absolute dominance of Greek water polo in the years ahead. In 2002, as a coaching consultant, he saw Olympiacos reach the very top of Europe with victory in the Champions Cup.

Nakić laid the foundations on which the Club’s greatness still stands

Iron discipline

Stamenić believed in defense, hard work, and discipline. He stressed physical fitness, but also the athletes’ mental cultivation. He spoke about “polo directors”, of “meaningful movement” and “team instinct”. Many of the top Greek coaches—including Thodoris Vlachos, Nikos Deligiannis and Kostas Loudis—were his students, either directly or indirectly.

And even after he quit coaching, the sport never left Stamenić’s heart. He continued to provide advice, write and speak passionately about the sport he loved. He passed away in 2024, leaving behind titles and accolades, but above all a way of thinking, an approach that made water polo more art and less “war”.

Nikola Stamenić was a man who inspired his players rather than browbeating them. Who guided rather than dictated. Which is the measure of a true leader.

Vlacho Orlic, the “high priest” of Yugoslav polo, said Stamenić “assembled the pieces of his team like a civil engineer”. Stamenić had an utterly unique way of thinking about polo, which was simultaneously innovative, radical and timeless. And his moral stance was honored, albeit indirectly, when the new rules of the sport placed fair play center-stage.

Mile Nakić: the cornerstone of the Olympiacos team of the 1990s. He changed the course of Greek water polo with his discipline, principles and dedication.

Mile Nakić

However, before Stamenić, there was Ante “Mile” Nakić. More than simply a great polo coach, he was a silent pioneer, a coach who worked for his sport ethically, with discipline and love, and was the cornerstone of Olympiacos’ emergence on—and subsequent dominance – of the European polo map.

Born in Šibenik in 1942, he started his career at VK Šibenik, where he played for a decade. As a coach, he started out with the same team, where he remained for another eleven years before embarking on his great journey on the international stage.

In 1978, he took over at Olympiacos for the first time, with a short but decisive tenure. He returned for a second stint in the 1985-86 season, and again for his most successful and historic partnership with the Reds in the mid-1990s. He led Olympiacos to two consecutive Greek championships in 1995-96 and established the club as a Greek water polo power house. The club’s subsequent European success would be built on the foundations he laid at that time.

With his focus on fitness and balanced tactics and flawless psychological management of his athletes, Nakić was considered the ultimate fount of knowledge about the sport. He was never noisy, and his teams did their talking in the pool. He used the Greek model as a springboard for taking the sport to new heights, while working with top athletes and passing on the principles of modern polo to Greece’s future coaches.

In addition to Olympiacos, he also coached the Greek (1992-1995) and Yugoslavian (1982-1983) national teams, leaving the latter post just two months before the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, where Yugoslavia took gold. He also worked at the Greek team of Halkida, as well as in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Slovakia, achieving results everywhere he went. He was particularly successful at Glyfada, which won four championships and three Greek Cups under his guidance.

Well-traveled, knowledgeable and always humble, Mile Nakić was more than a coach. He was a visionary who passed through Olympiacos at crucial moments in its history and changed the course of red-and-white water polo with his disarming professionalism. He was the cornerstone on which a great team was built that would go on to dominate Greece and conquer Europe.

In 2010, of the 12 clubs in the first division of the Greek league, seven had coaches who had played under Nakić! Names that remain iconic: the current national coach Thodoris Vlachos, Voltirakis, Chatzitheodorou, Loudis… His multifaceted coaching footprint continues to nurture Greek polo to this day.

Moreover, it was Nakić himself who paved the way for a number of Croatian coaches and players to come to Greece and forge a tradition that remains very much alive. It is no coincidence that Ante “Mile” Nakić lived and worked in Greece for 18 years in all.

Stamenić was a man who inspired his players rather than browbeating them. Who guided rather than dictated. Which is the measure of a true leader.

Dedication

Nakić, the father of another Olympiacos player, Franco Nakić, who was a European champion with the Reds in 1997, showed that sportsmanship and attention to detail were written into his DNA.

Olympiacos and Greek polo owe him a great deal. Ante Nakić’s contribution isn’t measured in medals. It’s measured in principles, ethics and progress. And the progress he made left an indelible imprint on Greek aquatic sport.

The names of the two Yugoslavs are indelibly engraved in Red on Olympiacos water polo, with Serbo-Croat intelligence and Balkan honesty. Nikola Stamenić and Ante “Mile” Nakić. The first, an architect of integrity, gave birth to a school. He didn’t just train players. He created men, characters who learned to fight fairly in the water, to win without crowing and to lose with dignity. Like a poet of the chlorine, he taught polo as an art, not technical trickery. The second—steady as a rock and with a gaze as deep as the Adriatic—built the Olympiacos of the 90s. He brought titles to Piraeus, but more than that, he gave the team discipline, structure and recognition. With mathematical precision and quiet strength, he laid the foundations on which the Club’s greatness stands still.

The two men followed different paths in the service of the same mission: to teach ethics, passion and perspective. For Olympiacos, Stamenić and Nakić were more than coaches; they were standard bearers for another, more ethical, era. And if, one day, they are forgotten by the many, they will live on still in the souls of those who gave their hearts to Olympiacos in the churning cauldron of the unforgiving pool.

Hope College sprinter Sara Schermerhorn posted her highest finish in the 200-meter run at the NCAA Division III Outdoor Track and Field Championships on Thursday.

The junior from Traverse City, Michigan (Traverse City West HS) placed 11th in the nation after clocking a time of 24.41 seconds during prelims at the SPIRE Institute near Cleveland.

The fastest nine of 22 entrants qualified for the championship race on Saturday, May 24. Schermerhorn finished .05 behind the final qualifier.

University of Wisconsin-Lacrosse junior Lauren Jarrett topped the field by clocking a run of 23.72 seconds.

As a sophomore, Schermerhorn took 14th place in the 200 at nationals. As a freshman, the exercise science major finished 16th in the event.

Schermerhorn claimed All-America Second Team accolades for the second time in her career. The United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association began awarding All-America Second Team honors in 2024.

The three-day NCAA Championships run through Saturday. 

Schermerhorn is scheduled to run in the 400-meter prelims on Friday, May 23, at 3:15 p.m.