News[]
- Olympic veterans head U.S. water polo teams - 06/30/08 - LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Brenda Villa and Heather Petri will lead the U.S. women's water polo team, and Tony Azevedo and Ryan Bailey head the United States (also known as USA)
men's squad at the Beijing Olympics.
Comments at Oprah site in Sept 2008[]
- BEHIND EACH OLYMPIAN THERE IS A STORY!!
We spent 18 days in Beijing watching many different Olympic Sports such as ping pong, badmintion, tennis, athletics, volleyball, gymnastics, swimming, handball, baseball and water polo. Many people out there do not know anything about the oldest team sport of the Olympic games. I guess the main reason is because California boasts the highest population of water polo players...anyways I write this article because I believe the true spirit of the Olympics is to take part in a sport that you truly love with the goal of participation to be at the Olympians highest skill level. I know there were upsets at the Olympics, but non greater than a team who was destined to not even finish in the top 6, who was seeded 9th out of 12 teams, a team who had no personal financial funding for the past year ....these water polo players from the mens USA team beat all the odds an finished with a silver medal. Lets hope the efforts of this Silver Medal Team will revive the interest of all those little kids who thought they might want to play water polo. So instead of financial gain these guys have become instant heroes in the water polo arena and its nice for these kids to have such a clean-cut group of hard working guys to be their role models. You will not see them on multi-million dollar television ads, but guess what ? The outpour of support and good wishes by hundreds in their community says it all for the Olympics and all for the love of sport.