Rob Varela / Star staff Merrill Moses, middle, one of the Team USA Water Polo goalies, says making the Olympic team would accomplish one of his lifelong dreams.

Merrill Moses had left water polo behind.

After being cut from the U.S. men's national team prior to the 2004 Olympics, the Pepperdine graduate had traded his swimsuit for a suit and tie, running a mortgage firm at a time, as he says, "when mortgages were good."

But Moses' break from the sport only lasted a year. When Terry Schroeder became an assistant coach for the national team, he lured Moses — who had been his goalkeeper when Pepperdine won the NCAA championship in 1997 — back into the game, and Moses is once again in hot pursuit of the Olympic experience.

"It would mean accomplishing one of my lifelong dreams," says the 30-year-old from Rancho Palos Verdes.

"After I got cut from the last Olympics, I didn't know if I was ever going to be an Olympian. Things changed and I came back, and I'm very excited about it."

Moses is one of four goalies competing for two spots on the Olympic team, which will be selected in June. The team, which is training in Thousand Oaks, will hold a practice and autograph session this afternoon at Cal Lutheran as a fundraiser to defray training expenses.

Schroeder, the Westlake Village resident and two-time Olympic silver medalist, is now the national team's head coach. When Schroeder became an assistant, he discussed the team's personnel needs with head coach Ricardo Azevedo.

With Moses and Brandon Brooks, the starting goalie in 2004, both having decided to leave the game (Brooks has since also returned), he knew the team needed a goalie, and decided to approach his former Pepperdine player.

"I called Merrill and said, Look, I'm going to be coaching through Beijing,' " Schroeder said. " I want you to think about joining the team and being part of this.' And really without any hesitation, he said, I'm there. Count me in.' "

Moses calls it "the best decision I've ever made."

Not that he regrets the year away, saying it gave him a taste of the working world and allowed him to build a résumé for the future. Still, he says, the time off changed his perspective a bit.

"When you see something get taken away from you," says Moses, "you just want it that much more. I was a lot younger, and when I came back, I was a lot more focused, a lot more motivated to make sure that this dream happened.

"I've always worked hard. But now you just go the extra mile."

Coming back after a year away wasn't easy, given the physical demands of the national team, which is in the pool about six hours a day as it prepares for the Olympics.

"It took about six months to get back in the groove of things," Moses said. "You lose your speed. You lose your legs. It's amazing."

Ryan Brown, the national team's goalie coach, says, "Compared to how he is now, you would consider him really out of shape. He slowly got back into it. Now he's very competitive every day, really intense, really focused."

That, Brown says, is what makes Moses exceptional.

"When we get games going, he has a fire inside of him. He very much wears his emotions on his shoulders. It could be a good thing. It could be a bad thing. As long as he focuses it in the right direction, it's a good thing, a positive thing."

As the only player who sees the entire pool throughout the game, goalies are required to do a certain amount of talking, directing traffic offensively and defensively.

Says Brown: "Goalies need to give direction — the ball's over here, the ball's over there. You need to help somewhat on offense, with the shot clock and where the ball is and stuff like that."

This is not a problem for Moses.

"People have told me I'm probably one of the most vocal goalkeepers out there," Moses said. "I'm very loud out there. It kind of pumps me up, but I like to let my players know what's going on, too."

There is, however, a fine line between talking and talking too much.

"I've had coaches sometimes say, Tone it down a little bit,' " Moses said. "Sometimes you get so caught up in talking you can miss the ball."

Brown agrees.

"You start doing all this talking, and start doing too much, you lose focus on what you're supposed to be doing. It happens to him sometimes. It happens to everybody sometimes."

It's talk of a different sort that Schroeder thinks of when he remembers Moses at the start of his Pepperdine career.

"Merrill came in as a very cocky, confident freshman," Schroeder said. "He basically came in on his recruiting trip and told the starting goalie he was going to take his job — and he did."

He did in no small part because of that confidence. Schroeder recalls a tournament game against UCLA in Moses' freshman season. Late in the game, with the Bruins playing with a 6-on-5 advantage, Pepperdine called a time out.

"We talked about who we wanted to shoot the ball," says Schroeder. "Merrill said, I don't care. I'm going to block it.' And he did.

"That's the kind of player he was in college. He was very consistent. He had maybe one, two off-games the whole time he was in college. He led us to a national championship."

Moses found that college experience only took him so far when he moved into international competition.

"It's 10 times more intense, 10 times quicker," he says. " In college, especially when you're a freshman, it's like baby steps. At this level, there's no baby steps."

To that end, Schroeder says Moses has taken big strides.

"It's been a big adjustment for Merrill," Schroeder said. "I think he has really had to grow up, both as a player and a person, and get to a position where he can get that same level of confidence back as an international player. "You need to be confident. You need to see the ball well, you need to believe in yourself and your defense in front of you, and that all takes time to get to at this level. But I can see Merrill getting a lot closer to where he needs to be with that, for sure."