FUHS aquatics coach David Bock was having a really great year. He led the girls water polo team through three rounds of CIF. His swim & dive teams also went to CIF. The girls 4×100 relay team won its heat in the CIF Division 3 Championship.
For his strong coaching skills and hard work as a campus superviser, Bock also was named Classified Employee of the Year, earning the most votes from teachers and staff.
With so many wins in his column, it then came as a devastating blow when he was recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS).
His wife, Courtney Robertson Bock, said David was driving one day in February when suddenly he lost his vision. “He pulls over and says, ‘I can’t see. I need you to drive.’ And I was, like, what? So we switched [seats] and I drove home,” Robertson said.
An MRI revealed 13 lesions on his spine and brain. There is no cure for MS, a disease that affects the central nervous system. However, Bock is scheduled to receive IV treatments with medicine similar to that used in chemotherapy every 6 months.
Although Bock, age 41, plans to coach the swim and dive teams next season, he’s stepped down as the girls and boys water polo coach.
Bock’s wife agrees with his choice. “He’s just a little worried about not being physically capable of managing the water polo team,” Robertson said. “There’s the stress of CIF, the push to win as a head coach, plus you get a lot of stress from parents. The stress was ultimately what led him to have such a severe MS flare up.”
And his wife certainly understands that type of stress. In fact, Robertson is the head aquatics coach for both the girls and boys programs at Segerstrom High School in Santa Ana. It’s nice having a spouse who truly understands your job. “It’s great that we can bounce ideas off of each other, and it’s nice because we feel the same kind of stress,” she said.
“Sometimes David can especially give me ideas on how to handle my male athletes, while I sometimes give him advice on how to communicate with his female players,” Robertson added.
Bock also is scheduled to return as a campus superviser. Assistant principal Danny Ma says Bock helps keep students safe. “If there are any safety concerns on campus he will notify us immediately,” Ma said. “Coach Bock goes out his way to connect with kids which is proactive in keeping unwanted things off campus.”
Bock says that being named Employee of the Year hopefully means he is a good influence on students. “I hope that the way I act would show our youth how they need to act as adults. Like, hey, all that trash that you put on the car, you’re responsible for it. You have to throw it away,” said Bock, who also hopes that he’s taught his athletes that “success isn’t measured only by wins and league titles.”
Bock can use his booming voice when he needs to get a student’s attention, but his wife says she’s impressed when he’s wise enough to choose a quiet approach.
“One time he was working on the pool deck when he noticed a girl from his team who was looking nervous. There was this group of guys who were maybe harassing her a bit,” Robertson said. “He knew if he yelled at the guys, it might make her feel worse. So he called her name and said, ‘I could use some help. Can you come here?’ and then the group of guys were, like, ‘oh shoot’ and moved on.”
Bock attended Sonora High School where he became a top swimmer and water polo player. He started swimming in second grade, but admits that, before high school, he’d never even heard of water polo.
Bock also admits that he was prone to mischief. During high school he played a prank on his swim coach by placing a fake advertisement in the local Auto Trader magazine. The ad stated that a Red Honda Civic Hatchback was for sale—only the car and the phone number were his coach’s car and coach’s number—not his own. “I wrote in the ad to call before 6 a.m. He got a thousand phone calls in the first week,” Bock said.
After the prank his coach got some revenge. “After practice the next week, the coach yelled, ‘Everyone out of the pool except Bock,’” said Bock, who explained that his punishment was endless laps of swimming the butterfly.
“But then I went on to swim the butterfly in CIF,” said Bock with a laugh. “I owe my best stroke to that punishment.”
After graduating from Sonora in 2000, Bock served in the Air Force for six years. His duties included making liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen for planes. After the military, Bock coached aquatics at Sonora and at Troy. He also worked as a bouncer at a Fullerton bar, cooked at a restaurant, and did some MMA cage fighting.
This was Bock’s eighth year as a coach at Fullerton, but he has over 20 years of aquatics coaching experience among the Troy, Sonora and Fullerton campuses. Bock is particularly proud that he’s helped lead the FUHS water polo team from Division 6 to Division 3.
Sophomore water polo player Marley Orejel has been coached by Bock since junior high through club water polo. “He’s pretty chill, and he cares about the safety of his players. He’s very involved in people’s lives,” Orejel said. “If you need help with something or you’re having a hard time, he’ll let you vent and help however he can.”
Senior water polo player Sienna Oliver has been coached by Bock since she was in sixth grade. Oliver says Bock is good at maintaining order as a campus superviser and has a fun personality.
“He’s like a father figure because I’ve known him for so long. I think he really deserved Employee of the Year,” Oliver said. “He can always take a joke and joke back. Like, just his personality is what makes him him.”
His wife Courtney says that his interactions with athletes is what she admires most about her husband: “We honestly think that our polo kids and our swim kids are our actual kids, or we’re at least their stepparents. I love that he just wants them to have fun and be kids and not have to worry about the struggles of life. You can see the love there. You can see the care.”
