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Tag: Water polo

  • Watch Bay Area women’s water polo players help Team USA rout Italy

    Watch Bay Area women’s water polo players help Team USA rout Italy

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    Five Team USA women’s water polo players with ties to the Bay Area scored one goal apiece in a 10-3 drubbing of Italy at the Paris Olympics on Wednesday.

    Jenna Flynn (San Jose native, Stanford University), Maggie Steffens (Danville native, Stanford University), Jordan Raney (Stanford University), Ryann Neushul (Stanford University) and Jewel Roemer (Martinez native, Stanford University) all found themselves on the score sheet in the preliminary round contest.

    Team USA is 2-1 to start the Games. They will return to the pool on Friday to face France.

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    Brendan Weber

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  • Flavor Flav champions diversity and safety in water polo at Paris Olympics

    Flavor Flav champions diversity and safety in water polo at Paris Olympics

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    Flavor Flav champions diversity and safety in water polo at Paris Olympics

    Flavor Flav is the official hype man for Team USA Women’s Water Polo.”Everybody wants to feel like they’ve got their back covered, like somebody has their back, you know what I’m saying?” the rapper said. “And when they feel that, it makes them feel more powerful… It makes them feel better, you know, it gives them energy to go out and win that fourth gold medal.”According to the players, his presence at the games has been more than playful; it’s been powerful. Ashleigh Johnson, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, is the only Black player on Team USA Women’s Water Polo.”I see people just asking questions about water polo, and like people of color wanting to start playing,” Johnson said. “And that’s a different community than I’ve seen talk about our sport in the way they were talking about it than I have at any point since I joined this team.”Johnson also emphasized the need for representation in the sport. “Our sport’s still not representative of the U.S., and I don’t think we have the best competing until we see good representation,” Johnson said.In addition to promoting diversity, Johnson and Flav are also advocating for safety in the sport. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, underserved and minority communities have increased rates of drowning. Johnson believes that seeing her and Flav in the water can help promote safety.”Like just taking those barriers away, and creating a pathway and access to opportunity is super important,” Johnson said.The U.S. Women’s Water Polo team was upset Monday by Spain. Their next game is Thursday against Greece.

    Flavor Flav is the official hype man for Team USA Women’s Water Polo.

    “Everybody wants to feel like they’ve got their back covered, like somebody has their back, you know what I’m saying?” the rapper said. “And when they feel that, it makes them feel more powerful… It makes them feel better, you know, it gives them energy to go out and win that fourth gold medal.”

    According to the players, his presence at the games has been more than playful; it’s been powerful.

    Ashleigh Johnson, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, is the only Black player on Team USA Women’s Water Polo.

    “I see people just asking questions about water polo, and like people of color wanting to start playing,” Johnson said. “And that’s a different community than I’ve seen talk about our sport in the way they were talking about it than I have at any point since I joined this team.”

    Johnson also emphasized the need for representation in the sport.

    “Our sport’s still not representative of the U.S., and I don’t think we have the best competing until we see good representation,” Johnson said.

    In addition to promoting diversity, Johnson and Flav are also advocating for safety in the sport. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, underserved and minority communities have increased rates of drowning.

    Johnson believes that seeing her and Flav in the water can help promote safety.

    “Like just taking those barriers away, and creating a pathway and access to opportunity is super important,” Johnson said.

    The U.S. Women’s Water Polo team was upset Monday by Spain. Their next game is Thursday against Greece.

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  • US water polo star prepares for Paris Olympics as husband battles lung cancer

    US water polo star prepares for Paris Olympics as husband battles lung cancer

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    COSTA MESA, Calif. — The phone call struck Maddie Musselman at her very center, confirming the worst fear for the U.S. water polo star and her soon-to-be husband, Pat Woepse.

    Pat’s nagging cough, the one that chased him around for weeks, including on a swim across the English Channel on his 30th birthday, was a symptom of an aggressive form of lung cancer.

    Immediately, there were all sorts of decisions that had to be made, about doctors and hospitals and treatment. But one decision was made right away, even before it became a conversation.

    Maddie was going to the Paris Olympics to help the United States try for an unprecedented fourth consecutive gold medal.

    “Pat, from the beginning, was like, ‘You’re not stopping playing water polo. I love watching you play,’” Maddie said with Pat sitting beside her on a couch in their Southern California apartment.

    She just had to figure out how. How do you play water polo at the highest level, when you can’t play water polo all the time? How do you park your life at the edge of a pool?

    “I know how much it means to her. I know how hard she works, how invested she is,” he said. “So given the opportunity to watch her play and have success, it’s like there’s nothing better in the world to me than watching that.”

    Musselman was 15 when she played in her first game with the national team in 2013. Mature beyond her years, to go along with a 5-foot-11 frame and impressive athleticism, she quickly became a key performer in an emerging dynasty.

    Musselman, one of three daughters for former major league pitcher Jeff Musselman and his wife, Karen, scored 12 goals when the U.S. won its second straight gold medal at the 2016 Olympics. She was the tournament MVP when the U.S. won again at the Tokyo Games, finishing with 18 goals.

    She is more than just a scorer, but her offensive ability stands out — even among the world’s best players. Facing China in last year’s world championships, she kicked a pass to her right hand and then flipped the ball over the charging goaltender while fighting off two defenders.

    After swimming back to the center of the pool for the resumption of play, Musselman had a bemused look on her face, almost as if she couldn’t believe the move actually worked.

    “She helps make the game look beautiful,” U.S. captain Maggie Steffens said.

    Lifted by Musselman’s stellar play, the U.S. is on the brink of history. No team — women or men — has ever won four straight water polo titles at the Olympics.

    That all seemed meaningless after the results of Pat’s biopsy came in.

    Musselman met Woepse when Kodi Hill, one of her teammates at UCLA, married Ryder Roberts, one of his water polo teammates with the Bruins, in January 2022.

    Woepse got Musselman’s phone number from Hill after the wedding. He gave her a call, but she let it go to voicemail because she didn’t recognize the number.

    Two years later, Woepse smiled as he recalled stumbling through his message.

    “No, it’s great,” Musselman interjected. “It’s like my favorite.”

    “She called me back and I’m very lucky,” Woepse continued.

    It worked right from the start. They bonded over their shared Catholic faith — something they have leaned on even more amid Woepse’s cancer diagnosis — and water polo. They started making plans.

    Woepse loves to travel, so he joined Musselman in Hungary for the 2022 world championships. After the U.S. won the title, the couple stayed in Europe for vacation. They also explored Japan after last year’s world championships in Fukuoka.

    Woepse proposed to Musselman on Newport Beach in June. They moved in together in August, and Musselman borrowed a dress from a family friend when they decided to get married on short notice Sept. 30.

    “It was always really easy dating Maddie, which is amazing,” Woepse said.

    It was all very easy for Musselman, too. She had been told that she was picky when it came to relationships, but she found what she was looking for in the affable Woepse.

    “When we went on that trip to Europe after Budapest, I was like, ‘This is awesome. I could spend the rest of my life with this guy,’” she said.

    The cough Pat had in Japan lingered after he moved in with Maddie, so he saw a doctor and got a chest X-ray. Following more tests, he learned in September that he had NUT carcinoma — a rare diagnosis that “seems to be a random, unprovoked event,” according to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Massachusetts.

    “Once you get the confirming call, it was tough,” Woepse said. “I was with my family and Maddie, obviously surrounded by everybody that loves me, so that was a pretty powerful moment.”

    Musselman, 25, took a couple of weeks off from training after they got the biopsy results, staying right beside Woepse as they figured out the next steps. They flew to Dana-Farber to consult with one of the doctors who discovered NUT carcinoma in the early 2000s.

    Woepse enrolled in a clinical trial that involves a mixture of two types of chemotherapy and a pill designed for his particular form of cancer. Along the way, Woepse and Musselman made a point of avoiding any prognosis for his long-term health.

    “It’s so rare, there’s not a lot of data points that can point to positive and negative cases,” he said. “So that doesn’t mean anything to me. And for us, really, it’s about us. It’s about me. So you can be the outlier, in my opinion.”

    Woepse’s cancer diagnosis was relayed to the U.S. women’s team in a variety of ways. Musselman met with coach Adam Krikorian days after the biopsy results came in, and teammate Kaleigh Gilchrist acted as a messenger while Musselman was away.

    It was an emotional time. Part of California’s small water polo community, Woepse’s connection to the U.S. team runs deeper than his relationship with Musselman.

    “He is without a doubt one of the best humans that I’ve ever met,” said Rachel Fattal, who played for UCLA while Woepse competed for the school. “And they are both incredibly strong, and together, they’re as strong as they come.”

    When Musselman rejoined the national team for training, she was nervous. It felt different. Everything felt different.

    She met with the team. She shared what she knew, and what she didn’t know — namely, how much she was going to be able to play. There was sadness, Musselman said, and “so much support and love.”

    “They really needed to see me in person,” she said through tears, “and kind of open the door for: We’re here for you, we want you to be here as much as you can, so when you are here, what do you need from us?”

    As it turns out, that was what she needed.

    There is no plan when it comes to Musselman and the Olympics. She is part of the U.S. team for the world championships in Qatar, scoring during Thursday’s 32-3 victory over Kazakhstan. She is in training when she can, and she is with Woepse when she needs to be.

    She is in almost constant communication with Krikorian.

    “I don’t know what the answer is,” Krikorian said. “I don’t know how to go about this. We’re literally taking this — as I told her from the beginning — we’ve got to just take it day by day, week by week.”

    While Musselman prepares for Paris, Woepse is focused on the same thing.

    “I’ve never been to an Olympics,” he said. “It’s my only goal right now to make it to Paris and to watch her play.”

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    AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

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  • Ghana water polo grows as sport looks for more diversity

    Ghana water polo grows as sport looks for more diversity

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    Back at the very beginning, right when the idea of water polo in Ghana started swimming into reality, Prince Asante got out a couple of balls and caps in front of a handful of curious kids.

    He decided to try a scrimmage, but he had no nets. So they put a soccer bench on each side of the pool.

    It was “enthusiastic confusion,” he said. And the caps — which have protective cups that go over a player’s ears — well, they were particularly amusing.

    “Somebody said, ‘Oh, water brassiere, thank you very much,’ a water bra,” a chuckling Asante said.

    That was one of the first meetings of the Awutu Winton Water Polo Club, a budding league in a tough part of the world for the Olympics’ oldest team sport — and a true passion project for the energetic Asante.

    Growing up in Coronado, California, he was often the only Black face in the pool or his classes. He went in search of a water polo that looked more like him, and found it in the waters of his father’s homeland.

    “This is like my baby, and it’s cute because, you know, it cries and it’s growing up, but it needs all of your attention, 24-7,” the 31-year-old Asante said. “Whenever I talk about it, it’s great, because it’s something that I would have loved to see as a kid.”

    In Ghana, dangerous rip tides off the country’s coast have caused countless drownings over the years. That’s led to trepidation about deep waters in a nation where low- and middle-income families already have limited access to swimming pools.

    When Asante first started swimming in African communities, he saw looks of fear and panic on faces because “they all have stories of someone going out and not coming back,” he said.

    The Awutu Winton club has seven teams representing three regions of Ghana. Players range in age from 7 to 25, and the league includes a group of about 20 women. It had 85 athletes and 10 coaches when it opened its new season last month in Ghana’s capital, Accra.

    Asante said most of his Ghana players had some knowledge of swimming when they joined the program, but not in deep water, where the sport is played.

    “Treading water and how to handle the water polo ball was very difficult when I started playing,” said Ishmael Adjei, 20. “But as time goes on, I could see I am improving personally.”

    Adjei’s club is part of San Diego-based Black Star Polo, an organization founded by Asante that also works on creating aquatic opportunities for African and African-American communities in the United States.

    “When I started playing, (my family) thought it was just a waste of time,” Adjei said, “because you had to help them do the family chores and you would take a timeout to go and have training … but as time goes on, they are getting interested.”

    Any significant growth in Africa would be a welcome development for a sport that has wrestled with a lack of diversity for decades, much like aquatics in general. Even in the places where water polo is most popular — such as California, and parts of southern Europe — there are very few players of color.

    Egypt and South Africa are the only African countries that have played men’s water polo at the Olympics. South Africa became the first women’s team from the continent to make it to the Games when it finished 10th in Tokyo in 2021. World Aquatics said it doesn’t have player participation figures broken down by ethnicity.

    “I think it’s vital for the growth of our sport to break out of the normalcy that it’s been the last century, of traditional water polo nations,” said former U.S. player Genai Kerr, who serves on the board of the Alliance for Diversity in Water Polo.

    The second of three brothers, Asante got into swimming and water polo after his family became good friends with the family of five-time U.S. Olympian Jesse Smith.

    Asante played college water polo at California Lutheran University and got his degree in psychology. He competed professionally in Brazil and trained in Europe.

    He often felt he stood out as a Black man.

    “Just being used to everybody being able to see me and standing out,” he said, “and I’m the one everybody notices first, on every class, every team.”

    It was different in Ghana, the birthplace of his father, Dr. Kofi Sefa-Boakye. Asante’s mother, Elizabeth, is from Los Angeles, and she met Kofi when they were students at the University of Southern California.

    Asante started going to Ghana with his father after he graduated from high school. He often brought balls and caps on trips to visit family. In 2018, he reached out to the country’s swimming federation, and it held an event at Awutu Winton Senior High School — one of the only schools in the country with a pool — where it made a donation and promoted the program.

    “What he’s doing is awesome, because it’s so difficult to start something from scratch,” Smith said.

    A relatively small geographic footprint can put a sport at risk of losing its place at the Olympics, according to Victoria Jackson, a sports historian and clinical assistant professor of history at Arizona State University. But, Jackson said, decisions about what sports to include are hard to predict and reflect politics, relationships and subjectivity.

    Jackson said an all-Black water polo team at the Olympics could have a profound effect on the sport.

    “I mean, it’s that quote, right? ‘You can’t be what you can’t see,’” she said. “It’s immediately horizon expanding.”

    That’s why Asante’s effort in Ghana has attracted attention in some prominent corners of the sport.

    KAP7, a company that sells swimsuits and other water polo gear, has shipped over goals and other equipment. Kerr and five-time U.S. Olympian Tony Azevedo also have donated equipment, and former USA Water Polo high performance director John Abdou did a Zoom training session for referees.

    “This is something where everyone can see, hey look, this is happening,” said Wolf Wigo, a three-time U.S. Olympian, one of the co-founders of KAP7 and the men’s coach at UC Santa Barbara. “It’s not just one Black person in a pool with 12 white teammates, or two. It’s a whole pool full of all Black athletes, all playing water polo, having a great experience.”

    Asante — whose full name is Prince Kofi Asante Sefa-Boakye — hustles to keep the project afloat, making the most of his connections in the sport and a GoFundMe page. But the way Asante sees it, he has already won.

    He is helping promote water safety in Ghana and his native Southern California, a major issue for Black communities. He helped teach swimming lessons to children of Somali refugees at a San Diego YMCA last year.

    “I just wanted to play the game,” he said, “but now, I’m realizing this is an even bigger and important mission than just before.”

    He also dreams of Ghana competing at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. The most plausible route would run through the Africa continental qualification tournament, but the next step is likely some of Ghana’s players joining American college programs. Asante also said he plans to field an under-12 team at a water polo festival in Italy in June.

    Los Angeles looks like a long shot, but Asante has a plan — and he already has traveled a long way.

    “My face is in front of a portrait, so I don’t see the full picture, so I’m able to compose myself,” he said. “But that would be literally bringing my two homelands together in LA, bringing Ghana to LA.”

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    Follow Jay Cohen at https://twitter.com/jcohenap

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    AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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  • Alexis Ohanian gets sports award, calls for reforms in NWSL

    Alexis Ohanian gets sports award, calls for reforms in NWSL

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    NEW YORK — Alexis Ohanian called out the need for a safe work environment in the National Women’s Soccer League while receiving the Champions for Equality Award at the annual Salute to Women in Sports event on Wednesday night.

    The former executive chairman of Reddit is a founding investor of the newest women’s professional soccer team, Angel City FC in Los Angeles. He was accompanied by his wife Serena Williams and daughter Olympia.

    “As a club owner, as a husband and as a father, I have been disgusted by what’s been brought to light as part of this ongoing investigation,” he said. “I’m hopeful it will lead to necessary reform.”

    He praised the players in the NWSL who are demanding accountability and changes after last week’s report from an independent investigation highlighted systemic sexual misconduct and emotional abuse. The investigation detailed administrative reporting failures in the sport, impacting several teams, coaches and executives in the league.

    “It’s to their strength, their bravery and their courage that we’re going to get a better NWSL,” Ohanian said to cheers at the Women’s Sports Foundation’s event in Manhattan.

    Five of the 10 head coaches in the NWSL either were fired or stepped down last season amid allegations of misconduct. Two owners have recently stepped away from their teams.

    Ohanian said he watched the U.S. women win the 2019 World Cup and mused about how Olympia might someday play in a World Cup: “Serena said, without missing a beat, ‘Not until they pay her what she’s worth.’”

    Ohanian is part of the majority-female Angel City FC ownership group that includes Williams, Natalie Portman, Mia Hamm, Abby Wambach, Julie Foudy, America Ferrera, Uzo Aduba, Candace Parker and Billie Jean King, among others.

    Foudy, a two-time U.S. World Cup champion, said rigorous guidelines are needed to combat sexual misconduct and it would “absolutely” help to have more female owners and female coaches in the NWSL.

    “The change of mindset in Angel City and that ownership group … is remarkable to see,” she said. “You don’t have to spend so much time expending energy about why you should support these women. They get it. The Angel City refrain I always get it is: ’What’s possible?’”

    Olympic gold medalists Sunisa Lee in gymnastics and Maggie Steffens in water polo were also honored as Sportswomen of the Year at the awards dinner, which commemorated the 50th anniversary of Title IX.

    South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley received the Billie Jean King Leadership Award. Staley not only led the U.S. women’s basketball team to the gold medal at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics but also guided South Carolina to its second NCAA title in five years in April. Staley is the first Black coach to win two NCAA Division I basketball championships.

    Bobsledder Elena Meyers Taylor, the most decorated Black athlete at the winter Olympics with five medals, was given the Wilma Rudolph Courage Award. She accepted the award with her young son, Nico, at her side. Meyers Taylor won her most recent medal despite having COVID-19 at the Beijing Olympics.

    “I’m inspired by this remarkable group of honorees, who are breaking records, eliminating barriers and blazing a path for a brighter future in and out of sports for girls and women,” said King, who in 1974 created the Women’s Sports Foundation, which provides community sports programs and training grants.

    ———

    More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP—Sports

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