Maggie Steffens is hoping to earn a fourth consecutive Olympic gold in Paris.
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Maggie Steffens, 30, is the American water polo team’s elder stateswoman.
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Maggie Steffens stars in a sport where much of the action is underwater.
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The queen of American water polo is back, searching for gold medal No. 4. And also some respect.
When Maggie Steffens was 19, just a year removed from playing for Monte Vista High in Danville, she was the spark that lifted Team USA to its first ever gold medal in the sport, scoring 21 goals in London. Twelve years later, she is hoping to earn a fourth consecutive gold in Paris.
With coach Adam Krikorian at the helm and Steffens leading in the pool, Team USA has created a dynasty. But not one many people recognize.
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“I usually don’t say this, but you’re damn right we feel like we’re overlooked,” Krikorian said. “You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who has had a more accomplished career than Maggie. I truly believe we’re one of the great teams in Olympic history but we don’t get the same attention as others. That’s OK. It puts a chip on our shoulder and inspires us, motivates us.”
If Team USA wins a fourth consecutive gold medal, Steffens will join Olympic luminaries like gymnast Simone Biles, tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams and basketball players such as Lisa Leslie and Teresa Edwards with four gold medals.
“She’s the head of the snake,” Krikorian said. “She’s a fantastic leader. We’ve been through this together for the past 13 or 14 years now. She knows our program in and out, the expectations, the standards, the tactics and technical skills. It’s like having another coach in the water.”
Now 30, Steffens’ current Olympic journey has been different. As the team’s elder stateswoman, she sees a bigger picture.
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“Before it was just, how do I survive? How do I make the team and not make mistakes?” Steffens said recently at an Olympic gathering in New York. “Now I’m constantly thinking about women’s water polo. How do we carry that torch and make it brighter?”
A few years ago, Steffens met with an agency, believing she had a pretty good resume to showcase, one that could make her attractive to sponsors.
“They were like, ‘Awesome, we love meeting you, everything you’ve done is amazing,’” Steffens remembered. “‘It’s just too bad you didn’t pick another sport.’”
Though water polo is one of the fastest-growing high school sports, it is still largely perceived as inhabiting a California-centric niche. Steffens, from a water polo family, said she feels like an ambassador for the sport and is determined to help grow it.
To that end, she joined with fellow Stanford polo player Tony Azevedo to create 6-8 Sports, a company that uses metrics and data analytics to improve performance. She has talked with her friend Julie Foudy about trying to find “that ’99 moment” for water polo, like Foudy’s U.S. women’s national soccer team had. She wants her sport to connect to the bigger surge of momentum in all of women’s sports.
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“I do believe that if you see it, you will love it,” Steffens said. “I’m very passionate about that.”
Steffens’ sport is a combination of basketball, soccer, swimming and wrestling, and she loves to talk about how fun and physically demanding it is. But Steffens thinks one of the things holding her sport back in terms of recognition is the head-down, team-first mentality that defines water polo. The majority of action is underwater, hidden from observers, and Steffens thinks that analogy carries onto the pool deck.
“The water polo way is to just keep your head down and grind and do your job,” Steffens said. “But what we’ve done is amazing. And it’s OK to be proud of that and share our story.”
Maggie’s first Olympic experience was as a fan in Beijing, when her sister Jessica was on the team. Jessica’s team won silver, losing a heartbreaking gold medal match to the Netherlands. Maggie’s father, Carlos, turned to his younger daughter after that loss and told her, “now, it’s your turn.” Her goal when she joined Jessica on the Olympic team in 2012 was to make sure the pioneers of the game, like Brenda Villa and Heather Petri, finally won gold.
The team dominated again in Rio 2016. In the pandemic-disrupted Tokyo Games in 2021, the path was more difficult. Steffens lost an Olympic match for the first time in her career, to Hungary in group play — the team’s first loss on any stage since 2014. The Americans prevailed over Spain in the gold medal match.
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Maggie Steffens of Team USA passes the ball against Xiao Chen of China in an April match in Long Beach.
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But it was clear the landscape was changing. Following the pattern of many women’s sports, Title IX and collegiate play gave the Americans a clear advantage before the world started catching up. In 2023, the U.S. finished fifth at the water polo world championships, before rebounding to win another world title earlier this year.
“We’ve made some big improvements,” Krikorian said. “And this team is a joy to coach. They are so young and enthusiastic.”
And they are still led by Steffens. Krikorian marvels at his team’s captain, comparing her daily demeanor to Stephen Curry.
“She brings relentless enthusiasm and energy,” he said. “Our sport is so demanding, but she brings that consistent energy, which is amazing to watch.
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“Her other super power is staying in the moment. She always knows exactly what she needs to do.”
Last November, Steffens got married. Her husband, Bobby Conner, was a soccer player at St. Mary’s before a knee injury ended his playing days. The wedding took place in Puerto Rico, where Maggie’s father, Carlos, was raised and played for the Puerto Rican water polo team, before earning a scholarship to Cal, where he won a national title, met his future wife, and launched his own line of water polo players.
After the strangeness of the Tokyo Olympics, where no fans were allowed, Steffens is looking forward to her husband and family being able to cheer her on in Paris.
Steffens has been on this journey for a long time, and isn’t ready to commit to another quadrennial, even though Los Angeles 2028 could be a perfect California showcase for a California-dominated sport.
She is constantly thinking about how to grow water polo.
“You win an Olympic gold medal and then you get to the airport, and it’s like, ‘Goodbye, good luck in college,’ she said. ‘But you watch other sports like gymnastics and soccer doing tours and events around the country.
“That’s a model I would like to encourage. We need to bootstrap it and get out there and showcase our sport.”
Krikorian knows that Steffens carries the burden of growing her sport.
“It’s always a bit of a heavy burden to make sure we continue the legacy that’s been created,” he said. “I think it inspires her. But there’s a feeling that we’re scratching and clawing to get as much notoriety as we can.
“And the best way to do that is to win.”
And winning is something that Maggie Steffens knows how to do, very, very well.
Reach Ann Killion: [email protected]; Twitter: @annkillion
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