Video Tribute: The CMS Men's Water Polo Class of 2021
As part of NCAA Division III week (Apr. 5-11), we will be honoring the senior classes for all 21 of our varsity sports. A number of our student-athletes elected to take a semester or a school year off and could return to action next season, but we have chosen to honor the senior classes as they would have been, without the COVID-19 interruption. The members of the Class of 2021 lost so much of what they had built towards in their first 2-3 years of competition when the pandemic hit, but still clearly left their mark on CMS Athletics.
CLAREMONT, Calif. - The CMS men's water polo Class of 2021 was a part of history, helping the Stags qualify for the first-ever USA Water Polo Division III Championship in 2019 in their last seasons of competition.
In order to qualify for the nationals, the Stags needed a dramatic comeback win over Pomona-Pitzer in the SCIAC semifinals, rallying from five goals down to win 12-11 on a last-minute goal. CMS then defeated Johns Hopkins in the USA Water Polo Division III semifinals before finishing as the national runner-up to Whittier in the debut season of the tournament.
The Stags improved all three years that the Class of 2021 competed, going from 14 wins as freshmen in 2017 to 16 in 2018 as sophomores to 18 wins in 2019. The 18 wins was also the second-highest total for the program in the 2000s, behind only the 21 wins from the 2015 team.
The seven members of the CMS Men's Water Polo Class of 2021 are as follows:
#15 CJ Box (6-3, Center, Menlo Park, Calif. - CMC, economics and engineering)
Box had 56 goals over his three seasons with the Stags, including 20 as a junior in 2019. That total included two goals in the USA Water Polo National Semifinals against Johns Hopkins to help the Stags to the win, as well as a goal in a 5-3 defeat in the finals. He also scored against USC in his college debut and added another goal against the No. 1 ranked Trojans as a junior. He was an Association of Collegiate Water Polo Coaches All-Academic selection as an economics and engineering dual major.
#16 Nick Britt (6-0, Attack, Newport Beach, Calif. - CMC, economics)
Britt had 52 goals and 34 assists in three seasons as an attacking player, including highs of 23 goals and 21 assists as a junior in 2019. He scored twice in a match-up with No. 1 USC in 2019, and had four goals and one assist in a win over Fresno Pacific for a season-high five points. As a sophomore, he had a hat trick in a big 11-10 win over Whittier, and also had a hat trick against nationally ranked Brown. An economics and data science major at Claremont McKenna, Britt has worked as a project manager consultant with the Los Angeles Dodgers, analyzing first baseman fielding ability based on ball trajectory.
#2 Rob Driscoll (6-3, Attack, Martinez, Calif. - CMC, economics-finance)
Driscoll had 55 goals and 34 assists in his career with the Stags, tallying 37 points as both a freshman and a sophomore. During the 2018 campaign, he had 20 goals, 17 assists and 33 steals, recording a season-high five points on three goals and two assists in a home win over Chapman. He also assisted on the game-winning goal with three seconds left in a 6-5 win over Navy and had a season-high four steals at Harvard. He is an economics-finance major at Claremont McKenna.
#18 Koss Klobucher (6-6, Attack, Santa Barbara, Calif. - CMC, English language and literature)
Klobucher had 30 goals and 39 assists over three seasons with the Stags, with a high of 25 points on 11 goals and 14 assists as a junior in 2019. He closed out his junior season strong by scoring in all four postseason matches, including a goal and two assists in the semifinal win over Pomona-Pitzer in the SCIAC Tournament and a semifinal win over Johns Hopkins in the USA Water Polo Division III Tournament. A literature major at CMC, Klobucher had an internship as a social media marketing specialist with Surf to Summit in 2020, and is currently working part time as a mutimedia journalist for FreeFood4Thought.
#3 Sean Pine (6-1, Center, Washington, D.C. - CMC, computer science)
Pine has played at the center position for the Stags in each of his three seasons with the program from 2017-19. He had two goals as a junior in 2019, finding the net against Fresno Pacific in a win at the Gary Troyer Invitational, and then again in a SCIAC win over Occidental. He also had a two-goal game as a sophomore in 2018, and had an assist in a win over Division I Iona. A computer science major at Claremont McKenna, Pine has been a project manager for the Harvey Mudd LAUSD Clinic team and is currently working as software engineer for Intuit.
#13 Christian Thornton (6-3, Utility, Manhattan Beach, Calif. - CMC, economics)
Thornton tallied 70 goals and 36 assists in his three-year career with the Stags, including a big year as a junior when he emerged as one of the top weapons on the team with 38 goals, ranking third on the team. He had five goals in the SCIAC Championship match, a narrow loss to Whittier, after tallying three goals and an assist in a big comeback win over Pomona-Pitzer in the semifinals. He also had a team-high three goals in the USA Water Polo semifinals against Johns Hopkins and scored four times against a Pepperdine team that would eventually reach the Final Four.
#14 Eric Weiner (5-11, Defense, Arlington, Va. - HMC, computer science)
Weiner tallied eight goals and five assists during his CMS career as a defender. He missed most of his junior season with an injury, but came back to score two goals and add an assist in the regular season finale. As a sophomore, he assisted on a goal in an 11-10 win in the season opener against Concordia, and contributed a goal and an assist in a tight 12-10 road win at Caltech. A computer science major at Harvey Mudd, he has conducted AMISTAD Lab research and did his Capstone Project at Lawrence Livermore National Lab investigating lipid bilayer compositions for molecular dynamics simulations.