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>> Ashleigh Johnson
Behind Outstanding Ashleigh Johnson, U.S. Women’s Water Polo Claim Third Straight Gold BY MATTHEW DE GEORGE
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or the briefest of moments, the U.S. women’s water polo team looked vulnerable. In the gold medal game, against the heavy underdog Spain, the U.S. saw an early lead challenged by an even second quarter. Then Ashleigh Johnson and company did what the U.S. does better than any water polo team in the world. Johnson was a brick wall in an outstanding performance, and the U.S. used that platform to run away from Spain with five unanswered goals in the third quarter en route to a 14-5 win in the gold-medal match of the Tokyo Olympics. It’s the team’s third straight gold medal, a streak that stretches back to London, again defeating Spain in the gold-medal match. The U.S. won silver in Beijing in 2008. It’s a third straight gold for Melissa Seidemann and Maggie Steffens. Maddie Musselman, Rachel Fattal, Kaleigh Gilchrist, Johnson, Aria Fischer and Makenzie Fischer all have won their second consecutive gold. “I have the chills right now. I don’t think it’s fully sunk in yet. I’m just proud of this moment. One thing we focused on through this whole tournament is just to enjoy the moment as much as possible and that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m
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just really happy,” Steffens said. “It wasn’t just one player. It wasn’t two players. You look up on there and we had different people getting blocks, different people getting huge goals here, different people guarding and to see such a full team at the end of this just makes me feel really proud to be a part of it.” The Spanish team would’ve sensed some opportunity in the U.S., with the Americans having dropped a group-stage game to Hungary to end a win streak dating back to the Beijing Olympics. But that vulnerability proved illusory, with a gold-medal score near that of the Rio triumph over Italy (125). The emotional celebration that followed illustrated that nothing was taken for granted, even from America’s golden generation of polo players. “This moment is everything we’ve been working towards over the past five years, and especially over the past 14 months. It’s been an intense show of resiliency and teamwork and love and passion and I’m so proud of what my team showed today. I’m so proud of how we performed for each other today and for the people that we represent. I hope everyone was watching and I hope they find something in our performance today because we gave everything that we had,” Johnson said.
