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Nikos Papanikolaou repatriated a few months ago for the sake of Panathinaikos, now troubling the defenders of A1 men’s polo, but on the other side of the ocean he has left his own legacy. And his legacy in the college championship, the famous NCAA is very likely to grow even bigger.
The international forward led California to its third straight championship last December, and he also won the same number of MVP awards. And he hopes that the very best for him will happen. In his senior year in the NCAA, he set a record for sacks (95) while scoring another 43 goals to put one full stop to a dream curriculum with 253 total goals (second all-time).
Contenders for the most important award of the league, the MVP of the year in fact, Rocco Pozaric (star in Princeton’s best season in its history) and Rafael Real Vergara of the arch-rival of Papanikolaou’s former team, UCLA.
The winner will be announced on the evening of Saturday, June 1st in San Francisco and the event will be Live Streaming HERE. This award has been given continuously every year since 1999 and the winner is selected through the votes of the coaches. He is named after a legend in USA water polo history, with eight NCAA titles as California’s coach.
Another important distinction for the “battleship” Papanikolaou who has left his own era in the college championship and is going to achieve something historic.
