An American's Guide to Olympic Water Polo

One of America's most dominant sports teams plays one of the Olympics' most terrifying games.

This is part 6 of RINGS RODGE, a roughly 15-part series where Olympics obsessive and journalist Rodger Sherman breaks down a different sport every day heading up to the 2024 Paris Olympics. You can probably get serious previews of the most popular sports on other sites… here, we’re doing unserious previews of sports that aren’t regularly on TV in between the four years between Olympics. Rodger didn’t really time things right so he’s not going to be able to get to all the sports BUT HE’S GOING TO TRY HIS BEST TO DO AS MANY AS POSSIBLE.

Today: Water polo!!!!

(Editor’s note: We’re skipping over the usual Monday wrap-up to fully focus on banging out these Olympics previews.)

Why should I watch Olympic water polo?

Water polo combines the artistry and finesse of our favorite team sports with the oh-my-god-that-person-is-killing-themselves-for-glory horror of our least favorite Olympic sports. We’re really watching two things at once: On the surface, it looks like some people passing a ball around and scheming a way to get it into the net—another fun little ball game!

But below the surface, the players are simultaneously treading water and fighting each other to the death. It’s the most violent way to swim that doesn’t involve piranhas.

Water polo players use a stroke called “the eggbeater,” a flurry of coordinated kicks, to stay afloat while keeping their hands free for ball-handling, allowing them to swim for hours at a time. And while we’re on the topic of egg-beating and ball-handling, we should talk about the alarmingly common water polo tactic of squeezing your opponent’s testicles underwater. While there probably won’t be any squashed grapes at the Olympics—they have underwater cameras and VAR for big events nowadays—water polo is an extremely aggressive contact sport, especially below the water, where the referees’ view is limited.

As soon as you remember that the players have to swim the entire time they’re playing, you feel awe about basically every action that takes place. How are they able to generate power on shots while also swimming? How is the goalie able to soar out of the water like some monster marlin without pushing off the ground? How is anybody able to tread water for an hour-plus and still have the energy to play a sport?

So who’s good?

AMERICA.

The USA women’s water polo team is the best in the world and the best of all time. They’ve won back-to-back-to-back Olympic gold medals and five of the last six World Championships. They ran off a 17-game win streak to start this year, although they did lose their final send-off game to Hungary, so maybe they’re washed.

It’s almost tough to identify the squad’s MVP. Maggie Steffens is the all-time leading goalscorer in Olympic history, and was named MVP of the 2012 and 2016 Olympic tournaments. If Team USA wins in Paris, she’ll be the first-ever four-time water polo gold medalist, men’s or women’s.

Goalkeeper Ashleigh Johnson has won Swimming World Water Polo Player of the Year—not best goalkeeper of the year, Player of the Year—an unprecedented five times.

Maddie Musselman was named MVP of the 2020 Olympics and 2022 World Championships, while Rachel Fattal was named MVP of the 2015 tournament. So with seven players in the pool, Team USA can field a lineup where more than half of the players have been named the best player in a major tournament.

So who is Team USA’s star?

With all due respect to Steffens, Johnson, and Musselman… the answer is clearly Shieldy, the mascot of USA Water Polo:

Shieldy is simply the logo for USA Water Polo with arms, legs, and a face.

Why’s it called “water polo?”

Sorry, that most of these posts are actually An American’s Guide To Sports Etymology. (You avoided my lengthy discussion on how the french word for “fencing” has the same root as the football term “scrimmage.”)

In the table tennis entry, I wrote that a better name for water polo might be “swimmy soccer.” I’m standing by that. It’s baffling that with all the sports dedicated to putting something in a net—soccer, handball, lacrosse, hockey, etc.—water polo got named after polo, the only one of those sports which involves horses, AND HORSES CLEARLY ARE NOT INVOLVED IN WATER POLO BECAUSE THEY ARE HORSES AND ARE NOT GOOD AT SWIMMING.

As it turns out, the first water polo players generally agreed. According to the “history of water polo” wikipedia page—I’d prefer to seek out primary sources, but, look, I’m writing a new sport preview every day—early names for water polo were “aquatic football,” “water rugby,” and “water handball.”

Most languages use the “water polo” naming convention, but in Italian its “pallanuovo” (essentially “swimball”) and in German it’s “Wasserball” (waterball!)

I think we need to adopt “waterball.” Wouldn’t you be more likely to watch Waterball than water polo? Water polo sounds too fancy—no wonder they only play it at, like Stanford and Ivy League schools!

What about men?

Some brave men play the sport in spite of the aforementioned testicular dangers. The American men have never won gold and haven’t medaled since a silver in Beijing—the sport is generally dominated by Hungary and countries in the Balkans. But the Americans did take bronze in last year’s World Cup, so they’re clearly capable of medaling.