Former UCLA water polo coach, Long Beach State All-American Bob Horn dead at 87

Former Long Beach State aquatics All-American and longtime UCLA swim and water polo coach Bob Horn died Friday after a long illness. He was 87.

Whether it was his days as a player or as coach, Horn was a titan of the water polo and swimming scene, not just in Southern California but nationwide.

“He’s one of the dominant figures in water polo history,” said former USA water polo president Rich Foster. “Just the combination of his athletic skills and his coaching expertise and results is pretty much unmatched.”

Born in Minnesota, Horn started his collegiate career with the Fullerton College water polo and swim teams in 1950-51. Soon after he joined the U.S. national team for the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia, where he played goalie for the American team.

Following his turn in Australia, Horn played at Long Beach State and was named an All-American after the 1957-58 season, also earning the school’s student-athlete of the year award.

Horn was nearly left off the 1960 Olympic team. Back then, clubs would enter Olympic trials and the winning coach would select seven players from his own team and four more from opposing ones to make up the U.S. squad.

A week before the trials, Horn and a few teammates were cut by the team favored to win the trials, Lynwood. Angered by this snub, Horn and those teammates formed their own club and made it to the final, only to lose to their former team by one goal.

But Horn had made such an impression, blocking all seven penalty shots he faced in the trials, that he still made the team for the Rome Olympics.

“He performed so well at the trials it forced his old coach to pick him,” Foster said.

Horn started his coaching career as an assistant at Long Beach State before being hired as UCLA’s first full-time aquatics coach in 1963.

In his 28 years as UCLA’s water polo coach, the Bruins won seven national championships and three NCAA titles, including the first official NCAA championship in 1969. The Bruins won 13 Pac-8 and Pac-10 titles during his tenure, and he coached 36 first-team All-Americans in Westwood.

“Bob was probably the most influential (person) in my polo development,” said former Bruin Bruce Bradley. “Six or seven members of the 1972 Olympic team were all coached by Bob.”

When he retired following the 1990 season, Horn had a record of 487-188-8. To this day, he remains the winningest coach in UCLA water polo history. He served as an assistant coach on the 1972 U.S. Olympic water polo team, which won a bronze medal.

Horn was inducted into the U.S. Water Polo Hall of Fame in 1976, the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Long Beach Aquatics Hall of Fame in 2017.

Foster remembered Horn both for his success in the pool and the person he was away from the water.

“He had one of the finest strategical minds of anyone from the United States,” said Foster, who played for a club team under Horn in Long Beach. “He was just a winner. There are people in life who are just winners and he was just one of them.

“He was such a likable guy and he liked everybody else. He made you feel good when you were around him.”

Horn is survived by wife, Dorothy, sons Jeff and Greg’ stepchildren Lynn, Anne Marie and Mark and seven grandchildren.

“Bob will be missed so much by our family,” Dorothy Horn said in a statement released by UCLA.

“He was an amazing husband, father and grandfather,” she said. “He never missed an opportunity to express his love for us and has left us with so many great memories.”