Newport water polo star Maddie Musselman Woepse honors late husband with pier swim
The group would go from 34th Street on the Balboa Peninsula to the Newport Pier and back.
More than 150 people took those strokes Saturday morning, a show of support for Woepse's family, his widow and NUT Carcinoma research.
The Patrick Woepse Foundation, created to honor Woepse's life and legacy, hosted the first PWF Swim. People from the water polo community and beyond participated.
Woepse is a former Mater Dei High and UCLA men's water polo standout who died last October at the age of 31 after developing the rare cancer.
His widow Maddie Musselman Woepse, a former Corona del Mar High and UCLA star who is a three-time Olympian and two-time gold medalist, called the turnout for Saturday's event great.
She couldn't participate in the swim as she recovers from a pair of hip surgeries, but she offered support to everyone in the water as well as a large group of walkers.
'When I started the foundation, I was like, this has to be the swim,' said Musselman Woepse, 27, who is gearing up to start physician assistant school at Marshall B. Ketchum University in Fullerton next week. 'It holds a lot of meaning for Pat and all of his friends. For our foundation's event, it's like the perfect swim. It's not too long, where people don't want to do it, but it's not short where Pat would be like, 'What's the point of swimming it if it's not hard?''
Pat Woepse's mantra was 'We can do hard things.' Several members of his family participated in the event, including his father, Greg, who kicked off the swim.
CdM boys' water polo coach Lucas Reynolds, who played two years with Pat Woepse at UCLA, brought nearly 40 of his current Sea Kings players to participate in the swim.
'I beat a couple of my kids, so I'm pretty happy about that,' Reynolds said with a laugh. 'It was a fun event, and it was nice to see so many people come and support Pat … I just think it was awesome, something that Pat would appreciate for sure. He loved the idea of people getting together.'
Though the swim was not technically a competition, Olympians Ryder Dodd and Rachel Fattal were the fastest to finish among the men's and women's competitors, respectively.
Musselman Woepse called it a weekend of celebration. Sunday would have been Pat's 32nd birthday, and a family dinner that night marked the occasion.
She said many who didn't even know her late husband came up to talk to her about him at the swim.
'That was so awesome, and makes me feel like what I'm doing with the foundation is so worth it,' she said. 'Making a difference, even in the smallest way … I'm hopeful that this will be a yearly swim that people can get excited for and just build on, as we have different events in the future.'
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