Editor’s word: This text is a part of our “Origin Tales” collection, specializing in the backstories of athletes and subjects across the Summer season Olympics.
MIAMI — The whistle sounded and the ladies’s water polo gamers for Group USA and Spain swam to the center of the pool. The referee threw the ball into the water. The gamers converged. The sellout crowd on the Ransom Everglades Aquatic Heart cheered.
Welcome to the swim-off, a barreling dash that opens every water polo match.
In a rematch of the Tokyo Olympic gold-medal match, the U.S. received 9-7 over Spain within the first of 5 worldwide pleasant matches for the Individuals in December. It was the U.S. workforce’s first aggressive motion since securing its place within the Paris 2024 Olympics when it received the Pan American Video games gold medal over Canada on Nov. 4.
In Paris, the U.S. will try to proceed its Olympic dominance. The Individuals have received three straight gold medals and haven’t missed a podium since girls’s water polo grew to become an Olympic sport in 2000, additionally incomes two silver medals and a bronze.
FINAL SCORE: USA beats Spain 9-7.
The Individuals scored seven targets within the second half.
USA will face Spain in a rematch on Saturday.
Nice ambiance in Miami. #Paris2024 | #Olympics pic.twitter.com/pXeB70Cfh6
— Lukas Weese (@Weesesports) December 7, 2023
However this can be a totally different Group USA. A number of gamers might be Olympic rookies, combined in with skilled veterans like Maggie Steffens — Group USA’s most adorned girls’s water polo participant, who helped seize the three-peat.
A kind of rookies is Ryann Neushul, making an attempt to make her first Olympic roster. However she isn’t like most Olympic rookies. Her sisters — Kiley and Jamie — additionally performed water polo and received Olympic gold. All three went to Stanford and achieved greatness on the Cardinal’s illustrious girls’s water polo workforce.
By making the Paris 2024 workforce, Ryann, 23, would accomplish a childhood dream: to comply with within the footsteps of her sisters and characterize Group USA on the highest stage in water polo, all whereas hoping to increase the nation’s already-unprecedented gold-medal streak.
It’s onerous to flee water polo within the Neushul family. Ryann’s dad and mom — Cathy and Peter — performed collegiate water polo at UC Santa Barbara. Peter was on UC Santa Barbara’s lone championship males’s water polo workforce. In 2015, Cathy began the Santa Barbara “805 Water Polo Membership,” which permits athletes ages 4 by way of 18 to develop as water polo gamers.
Being across the pool deck and within the water, Ryann caught the water polo bug. At 5-foot-6, she’s not the tallest participant, however she compensates along with her innate dedication.
“Dimension doesn’t matter within the water,” Neushul stated. “You get within the water and also you simply play.”
Neushul seemed as much as her older sisters. Seeing them within the pool offered Ryann with the foundational information of what it took to be the most effective. Neushul recollects as a 10-year-old watching Jamie and Kiley play towards Newport Harbor, a competitor to Dos Pueblos Excessive College within the CIF Southern Part Division I championship recreation. Newport was main Dos Pueblos, 7-2, simply earlier than halftime.
“They’re not going to allow us to lose this recreation,” Ryann stated of her sisters.
Dos Pueblos defeated Newport Seashore that day, 8-7. Jamie, a freshman in highschool, scored the tying and game-winning targets.
Flash ahead to Kiley’s final NCAA championship recreation at Stanford. Ryann was in attendance, taking within the finale of a stellar collegiate profession. She pointed to Kiley drawing an exclusion (water polo’s time period for a foul), giving Stanford a bonus. On the following energy play, Kiley handed to Jamie, who tossed it again. Kiley blazed the ball previous the goalie for the rating.
Ryann was awestruck. Kiley scored 5 of Stanford’s seven targets en path to the 7-6 victory over UCLA. It was Kiley’s third NCAA championship. For Ryann, it was a supply of inspiration. She wished to comply with the trail her sisters carved. To be dominant water polo athletes. To play within the greatest matches.
“I would like individuals within the stands to be like, ‘Ryann Neushul isn’t going to let her workforce lose by eight targets,’” Neushul stated.
At 23 years previous, Ryann Neushul is the newest Stanford star making waves with the U.S. nationwide workforce. She hopes to assist Group USA win its fourth straight gold medal subsequent summer time. (Tyler Schank / NCAA Pictures through Getty Photos)
John Tanner sat in his workplace at Stanford’s Avery Aquatic Heart, the place he’s coming into his twenty seventh season in command of the Cardinal girls’s water polo workforce.
Mentioning Ryann Neushul makes Tanner grin. He nonetheless sees the little woman on the pool deck watching her sisters or being the lightning rod of vitality at workforce occasions.
Tanner first spoke with Ryann on the pool deck at Cal State Bakersfield. She was 9 years previous.
“She got here as much as me and stated, ‘Hello, JT, I’m Ryann,’” Tanner stated, marveling at her mind and confidence at such a younger age.
He brings up her first NCAA championship win in 2019. It was an exclusion, the place gamers typically go the ball to arrange a scoring likelihood. As a substitute, Neushul took the ball, fired it into the web and scored. No hesitation.
“How we stock ourselves contributes and even leads our confidence,” Tanner stated. “Simply no scarcity of perception in herself.”
Tanner was an All-American water polo participant at Stanford. He grew to become a scout coach for the U.S. nationwide workforce in 1988. Ten years later, after teaching the U.S. workforce to gold on the 1991 World Cup, he returned to his alma mater. He assumed the ladies’s water polo head coach position. In Tanner’s fifth season on the job, Stanford received its first NCAA championship. It started an avalanche of accolades for Tanner’s program. 9 NCAA championships. Fourteen Olympians. Stanford hasn’t completed outdoors the highest three within the nation in any of his seasons as coach.
These achievements are a by-product of the excellence Tanner cast at Stanford for over 20 years. The coaching, the expectation and the competitors ready Stanford athletes just like the Neushuls for the nationwide workforce.
“The liberty to decide on your main, the liberty to make choices within the water has molded me into the participant I’m at present,” Neushul stated of Tanner’s workforce tradition.
For these water polo athletes desirous to make the Olympics, Tanner meets with them individually. He writes down an in depth plan of the steps essential to be thought of for the workforce.
Neushul remembers that assembly with Tanner. A collaboration between coach and athlete with the hope of accelerating the trail to the Olympic objective.
“He’s extraordinarily meticulous,” Neushul stated. “He says, ‘I’m environment friendly together with your time, so you’ll be environment friendly with my time.’ We’re all sacrificing to be right here.
“He doesn’t simply care concerning the gamers for what they do within the water. However he cares about them as a human being and what they will do sooner or later for the world.”
On the morning of the worldwide pleasant towards Spain, Group USA educated for 2 hours. The athletes dove into the pool, swimming laps for his or her 15-minute warmup. Then, the gamers practiced passing.
Adam Krikorian, Group USA’s girls’s water polo coach since 2009, referred to as his gamers over to the far finish of the pool. Krikorian’s tenure with the nationwide workforce contains three Olympic gold medals, 5 World Aquatics championships and 4 World Cups.
Briefly, a dynasty.
“The one factor I’ve loved is simply the vitality and the positivity that each one of our new gamers have delivered to this course of,” Krikorian stated. “It evokes you to be higher, and it sort of brings you again to that point — for me, 14 years in the past — after I first began this job and it offers you just a little enhance of vitality.”
Adam Krikorian (squatting) instructs Group USA in the course of the 2023 world championships, together with Maggie Steffens (No. 6) and Ryan Neushul (No. 8). (Albert ten Hove / BSR Company / Getty Photos)
Krikorian instructed his gamers to follow the 6-on-5 formation. Because the gamers handed the ball and the defenders locked onto their assignments. There was a set period of time per drill. Ashleigh Johnson, Group USA’s goalie, was counting down.
With Group USA, Neushul is taking up a extra defensive position, a distinction to the offensive presence she introduced whereas at Stanford. However Neushul doesn’t thoughts. She sees herself as a bridge between the gold medalists and the newcomers on the nationwide workforce, adaptable to assist the workforce win.
The passing and communication is on show in the course of the U.S. Ladies’s Water Polo follow.
Under is a 6-on-5 drill ⬇️. #Paris2024 | #Olympics pic.twitter.com/Lgqs2rW1Z7
— Lukas Weese (@Weesesports) December 7, 2023
Whereas the 6-on-5 drill continued, Neushul moved to a different pool. There, she labored with Steffens on defending ways. For Steffens, there’s nothing left to show in water polo. A 3-time Olympic gold medalist, a four-time world champion, a three-time Pan Am gold medalist, and a four-time World Cup winner, she’s in rarified water polo standing. She nonetheless loves the sport. She embraces the competitors. Most significantly, the 30-year-old Steffens enjoys mentoring youthful gamers like Neushul.
“She’s like just a little sister to me,” Steffens, additionally a Stanford graduate, stated. “She does an incredible job discovering her personal identification. She’s keen to struggle and I can really feel her coronary heart hundreds of miles away.”
Down 3-2 at halftime towards Spain, Group USA showcased its high-scoring offense within the second half. Within the third quarter, the U.S. outscored Spain, 4-1. The fourth quarter noticed the U.S. take a four-goal lead that it by no means relinquished.
Neushul, Steffens, Jewel Roemer (additionally from Stanford), Denise Mammolito, Kaleigh Gilchrist and Rachel Fattal scored within the second half. Roemer led Group USA with two targets. As the ultimate horn blasted, the ladies embraced and exited the pool. In response to Krikorian, matches towards the highest international locations on this planet are mandatory preparation for Paris 2024. In contrast to earlier groups, which had a number of returning gamers, this model of Group USA is navigating new territory. They aren’t as proficient, based on Krikorian. Not as skilled.
“It is a model new workforce,” Krikorian stated. “We haven’t finished something.”
This is the reason Group USA is doing the rigorous coaching. Gamers are away for a number of months at a time — coaching in Lengthy Seashore, Calif., taking part in matches in Florida and abroad in Europe. To be ready for the enormous Olympic stage.
(High photograph of John Tanner and Ryann Neushul celebrating Stanford’s 2019 NCAA championship: Jamie Schwaberow / NCAA Pictures through Getty Photos)