It’s A Women’s Water Polo Three-peat, But A Singular Victory For This Battle-Tested Squad

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by Chrös McDougall

Team USA poses after receiving their medals during the Women’s Gold Medal match at the  Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 on Aug. 7, 2021 in Tokyo, Japan.

 

TOKYO — In 2020, a few days after Valentines Day, the U.S. women’s water polo team wrapped up a week of training in the Netherlands with a game against the host team. Little about that game stood out: Maggie Steffens led the offense, goalie Ashleigh Johnson stopped 10 shots and the U.S., the defending champs at every major tournament, recorded yet another win.
It’s a story you could write about any number of games over the past several years.
Nothing about what happened next was routine.
Between then and the team’s next scheduled game, in April against Japan, the pandemic spread across the world. No corner of society went unaffected, sports being no exception. In an unprecedented move, the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, which that training camp was to prepare for, were postponed a year. The slate for the U.S. women, meanwhile, was wiped clear.
For 453 days, from that win over the Netherlands until a three-game series against Canada in May 2021, the team went without an official game. For 32 minutes on Saturday, the team looked like one that had spent all 453 days preparing for exactly this moment.
Behind three goals from tournament MVP Maddie Musselman and another dominating performance by Johnson, the U.S. defeated Spain 14-5 at Tokyo’s Tatsumi Water Polo Centre, in the process becoming the first women’s team to win three consecutive Olympic gold medals.
The win continued a run of success never before seen in the sport, and one that fans back home are deservedly celebrating. Those on the team try not to look at the string of championships as a theme, however, preferring instead to see each individual tournament as its own unique event with its own unique roster and experience. And the experience for the 13 women who won an Olympic gold medal on this penultimate day of the Tokyo Olympics was one of adversity.
When the pandemic forced much of the country to shut down, the national team athletes used to predictability and routine suddenly found themselves with neither.
Some were able to stay in shape by doing solo workouts in backyard pools. Weekly Zoom calls helped everyone at least stay connected, even if just to vent. One of the biggest adjustments, though, was just having free time. With plenty to kill, teammates Kaleigh Gilchrist and Paige Hauschild each got ukuleles, and one of the team’s trainers tried to teach them to play the instrument over Zoom.
Even in June, when the team was able to get back in the pool together, the players had to do everything in small, socially distanced groups, with regular Covid testing between sessions.
As the weeks went on, some normalcy returned. The only thing missing: games. Sure, the team scrimmaged some high school boys’ teams from Southern California. But for the better part of 16 months the only opponents the national team faced off against were each other.
“The team definitely had some tiffs and had to get after it with one another and beat each other up every single day,” said Steffens, the U.S. captain and MVP of the past two Olympics. “As you can imagine the locker rooms were tense after that.”
Whatever the team was doing during that window, it appeared to work. This past June, the U.S. went undefeated in the FINA World League Super Final to claim a seventh consecutive championship in the annual tournament. On July 23, the Americans opened the Tokyo Olympics with a record-setting 25-4 win over hosts Japan, setting Olympic marks for scoring total and margin or victory.

Everything was going as planned until four days later, when the U.S. lost 10-9 to Hungary in pool play. It was the team’s first loss in an Olympic game since 2008, and only its second loss overall in nearly 3.5 years. Then, earlier this week, the Americans nearly lost again, going down 7-5 early in their semifinal against the Russian Olympic Committee.
Team USA ended up winning 15-11 to return to a fourth consecutive gold-medal game. In some ways, coach Adam Krikorian said, that experience might have been a net positive for the Americans.
“So often we just want confidence given to us, but true stuff, the really great stuff, is built through adversity,” he said, “and I think that Russia game helped build it.”
In a rematch of the 2012 gold-medal game, which the U.S. won, the Americans came into Saturday’s final against Spain as the favorite, even as both teams carried identical 5-1 records. Team USA showed why from the outset.
Alys Williams put the U.S. up within the first 30 seconds, and from there just about everything Spain tried was snuffed out. That’s not to say Spain didn’t have chances, including two shots that slammed off the crossbar, but more often than not it was Team USA’s 6-foot-1 wall of a goalie Johnson who was stuffing shots left and right. She ended with 11 saves on the night, giving her 80 for the tournament. Afterward she was named top goalie of the Olympics.

 

 

 

 

“That’s why she’s the best,” Krikorian said.
“She just gave us a ton of confidence,” he added. “When she’s back there and you see that big smile of hers, it gives you the confidence but it also relaxes you a little bit and it helped to settle us in.”
Musselman, with a hat trick, was one of four U.S. players with a multi-goal game, and nine U.S. players got on the board. Aria Fischer, Gilchrist and Williams each had two goals for Team USA, which jumped out to a 6-1 lead and was never seriously threatened after that.
“Today I think was a show of who we are as a team,” Steffens said, “that no matter the adversity that’s thrown our way, we stick together and as a team and we rise up and we find those moments.”
With 18 goals, Musselman ended in a three-way tie for the tournament’s second leading scorer, with Steffens being one of the others. Makenzie Fischer added 14 goals and Stephanie Haralabidis 13 for Team USA.

 

 

 

 

Steffens and Melissa Seidemann also became the first women to win three Olympic gold medals in the sport.
In the grand scheme of history, this U.S. team is another in a line of many other great women’s water polo teams. Between the Olympics, the world championships, the FINA World Cup and the World League, Team USA is the multi-time defending champions in each. The last tournament not ending with a gold medal was in 2013, when the U.S. finished third in the World League.
Krikorian and the players are hesitant to talk about this 2020 Olympic team as part of any broader discussion about a U.S. winning streak.
“This is the first one for that team,” Krikorian said. “And every team is different, they’re all special.”
The Americans are also hesitant to talk of themselves as particularly unique in what they’ve gone through this past year.
“Every single person that’s been here has been through a heck of a lot,” Krikorian said.
Yet for the third Olympics in a row, it is Team USA that is going home with the gold medal.
“It’s wild,” Gilchrist said. “You dream of this moment.”

Want to follow Team USA athletes during the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020? Visit TeamUSA.org/Tokyo2020 to view the medal table, results and competition schedule.

Chrös McDougall #


Chrös McDougall has covered the Olympic and Paralympic Movement for TeamUSA.org since 2009 on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc. He is based in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

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