The US has sent a men’s water polo team to the Olympic Games 24 times since 1904. They have never won a gold medal.

Beginnings

In 1904 at the St. Louis games, water polo was an exhibition sport only–and Team USA did win gold. And silver and bronze. That’s right, Team USA was first, second, and third because only US teams were entered. The gold team was the New York Athletic Club (NYAC), the silver team was the Chicago Athletic Association (CAA) and the bronze team was the Missouri Athletic Club (MAC).

A European Affair

European countries since then have dominated Olympic water polo. Hungary leads the way with nine gold medals, followed by Great Britain with 4 gold medals and Italy and Yugoslavia with three gold medals each. And Serbia has emerged in the 20th century as a powerhouse winning gold medals in 2016, 2020 and 2024.

The US Olympic Team is the only non-European team to ever even win an Olympic medal. That means that over the past 124 years Olympic teams from Asia, Australia, Africa and all the other America’s have been shut out!

Europe’s dominance in water polo comes down to several ingredients: (a) Deep-rooted systems: elite domestic leagues (b) strong youth development (c) government and club investment and (d) a cultural reverence for the sport in countries like Hungary, Serbia, and Italy. Local leagues draw good crowds and media attention, and players are treated as stars.

As a result many players from the US team now migrate to Europe to play for one of these professional teams following college. Approximately 17-18 former US Olympians are playing for various European clubs at this time trying to elevate and fine tune their game in time for the LA 2028 Games where they will then compete against their former European teammates!

Close But No Cigar

So since 1904 (in twenty two attempts) no US water polo team has ever finished higher than silver. Six times American teams have won silver. Starting in 1984, at the last LA Olympics, Team USA would win its first silver medal ever led by a legend in the sport: Terry Schroeder.

The Statue

A four-time U.S. Olympic water polo player from Santa Barbara, Schroeder is immortalized in bronze outside the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, his nude torso standing tall for the idealized, universal Olympic athlete. He was the model for the male statue that was bolted into place outside the stadium’s peristyle end in June 1984 and serves as a meeting place for countless football, soccer and concert fans.

“I don’t go down that way a whole lot,” says Schroeder, a chiropractor, longtime Pepperdine water polo coach, and part-time assistant to the U.S. water polo team.. “But I have patients who come in and say, ‘I was at the Coliseum and I saw you down there.’ And I think, ‘Oh, great.’

How did Schroeder end up posing for a bronze statue for the 1984 Games and enduring ribbing from teammates that goes on even now? For starters, the United States never took part in the 1980 Summer Olympic Games. Merging athletics and politics for reasons many still don’t understand, President Jimmy Carter announced in 1980 that the United States would boycott the coming summer’s Olympic Games. This altered the lives of Schroeder and many other athletes.

“The boycott in `80 really changed a lot of things,” Schroeder said. “It changed the way I thought about the Olympic Games, about the sport of water polo and what it meant to me in my life, it was kind of a big crossroads for sure. It made me think about what I really wanted and what I was getting out of this and why I was really doing it.”

While the United States was among the favorites in 1984, it didn’t mean things would be easy. That said Team USA rolled early on, downing Greece 12-5, Brazil 10-4, and Spain 10-8 in preliminary play. In the final round things got a little tighter. Team USA edged the Netherlands 8-7, toppled Australia 12-7 and on August 9 defeated West Germany 8-7 to approach the medal round undefeated. They would take on rival and fellow gold medal favorite, Yugoslavia.

“In the final we were ahead 5-2, knowing we had that game. He continued, “that feeling of being ahead 5-2 and knowing we had that shot to win the gold medal and I had a goal taken away at the end by an offensive call,” laments Schroeder. Then Yugoslavia scored three unanswered goals in the fourth quarter to force a 5-5 draw, winning the gold medal on goal differential.

Terry Schroeder would go on to do a lot in the game of water polo. After making his long-awaited Olympic debut in 1984 and leading his squad to a silver medal, he would earn another silver at the 1988 Olympic Games and come painfully close to a third-straight medal at the 1992 Games in Spain. Starting in 1986 he became head coach at Pepperdine, his alma mater; he guided the team to the pinnacle of the game at that level, an NCAA crown, in 1997. He returned to the National Team scene in the mid-2000s and took over in 2007 as head coach of a down-on-its-luck Senior National Team led by a rising star by the name of Tony Azevedo.

Tony The Tiger

Considered perhaps the greatest men’s water polo player the United States has ever seen, Tony Azevedo, born in Brazil and raised in California into a water polo family dynasty, was first coached by his dad, Ricardo—a longtime player and coach at the US National Team level.

Azevedo would make his Olympic debut as a player in the 2000 Sydney Games, just months removed from his senior prom. Azevedo would go on to Stanford and win two NCAA championships and a record four-straight Cutino Award honors as the college game’s best player. He returned to the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004. In 2008, he would captain a U.S. team that returned to the Olympic podium for the first time in 20 years, claiming a silver medal at the Beijing Games. He continued to serve as captain at the next two Olympic Games in London in 2012 and in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Azevedo is fourth all-time in Olympic water polo history, with 61 goals scored overall.

Big Ben

Ben Hallock is a two-time Olympian who was a key player for Team USA in the 2024 Games in Paris. Hallock was a California state champion in high school and an NCAA champion at Stanford in 2019. That year also marked his second in a row winning the Cutino Award as the top men’s college player in the sport.

But Hallock chose to leave Stanford before his final season to play professional water polo for Pro Recco in Italy. The 6-foot-6, 245-pound center is now in his fifth season with Recco, where he’s able to fine-tune his game by playing so many games against some of the best players in the world.

“In the U.S. the highest level is pretty much college,” Hallock, originally of Westlake Village, California, said. “Here, you have older players. You have grown men doing this for a living. It’s the reps and amount of play you get,” he said. “It’s the quality and the strength of everyone around you and the amount of games you play. It’s consistently been a humbling experience. If you don’t bring everything out there, then you get humbled.”

If you want to beat the best you have to play with the best. Hallock and most of his teammates from the Paris 2024 team have been playing in Europe for pro teams all over the continent. I interviewed one of them, Dylan Woodhead, a 6’-7” defender who has been playing in Athens Greece. Dylan, Ben and Team USA are currently back together training in California as this story is being published and I hope to catch a practice or watch them play an exhibition match against the Australian Olympic Team.

LA 2028

Team USA will once again have its work cut out in 2028 at the LA Olympic Games. Will this be the Games where they finally get past Hungary, Serbia and the other European powers to claim a gold medal? I certainly hope so!