Pride of Relentlessness

TICKETS WERE HARD to come by for the Olympic women’s water polo semifinal at the vast Paris La Defense Arena.

But three months after Taylor Swift brought The Eras Tour to the indoor venue, the Neushul family, wearing their “Team Neushul” T-shirts, settled in for the game against Australia.

The United States, though not as dominant as in recent Olympic Games, had won the past three gold medals and never failed to medal. Australia was a frequent victim against the U.S. in the leadup to the Paris Games. 

The seats weren’t the best, but close enough to allow nervousness and anxiety to creep in where pride and gratitude typically reside in a family with three Olympian daughters – Kiley, Jamie, and Ryann – each a Stanford water polo national champion.

Ryann fought seven years for this, failing to make the 2021 Olympic team, but becoming a fixture in defense for the 2024 squad. She had watched Kiley win Olympic gold in Rio in 2016 and Jamie do the same in Tokyo in 2021. Now, in her first Olympics, this was Ryann’s moment.

At the team introductions, Kiley and Jamie cried when Ryann was announced. They understood the toil and the stakes.

“It was inspiring to watch her,” Jamie said. “But it was crazy and exciting and all so scary.”

The game began as expected, with the U.S. seizing a 5-2 lead and later held an 8-6 fourth-quarter edge. But Australia closed fast and sent the game into overtime. Though Neushul did her part as a center defender, she ultimately was unable to prevent the U.S. from losing in a penalty shootout, 14-13.

The loss dropped the U.S. into the third-place game, which also ended in heartbreaking fashion, with a last-second goal that gave the Netherlands an 11-10 victory. No gold. No medal at all.

Both were stunning results, but blowing a late lead against Australia was the dream-killer. Long after that game ended, family members from both teams gathered near a small tunnel. The Australians emerged to shouts of joy and shrieks of ecstatic disbelief, while the American families watched in awkward silence.

Slowly and silently, the American players filtered out of the tunnel. Ryann saw her family and tried to appear strong, but as her sisters closed in and surrounded her in a tight embrace, Ryann was unable to control her emotions.

“I’m the only one without a gold medal,” Ryann told them.

“I know. But a medal is just a medal. 

“You did everything you could.”

THE PAIN OF that day could have clouded her feelings for a sport integral to her family throughout her life. The Olympic experience could have sucked the joy from it altogether. If it all ended in Paris, Ryann might have ended her career in a very different place.

Thankfully, she had another season at Stanford.

“I was worried that I would feel resentful and less excited to play,” she said. “I was worried about feeling apathetic, of even being motivated to continue playing.”

However, once she returned to campus and felt the excitement and energy from her teammates, that was never a problem. 

“I came in with more fire than I ever thought,” she said. “It’s made me understand how fun water polo can be.”

Neushul, team co-captain with Olympic teammate Jewel Roemer, has found this season to be healing. No longer locked into a specific role as she was with the national team, the versatile Neushul plays with freedom in a system and culture cultivated by John Tanner, the Dunlevie Family Director of Women's Water Polo, and associate head coach Susan Ortwein that can be nurturing and welcoming, yet still demands accountability and excellence.

With the top-seeded Cardinal in Indianapolis for this weekend’s NCAA tournament, Neushul could close out a collegiate career that began in the 2019 season as the only player in Stanford women’s water polo history to win four national titles. And she’ll close out the Neushul Era at Stanford that began with Kiley, two-time winner of the Cutino Award as the nation’s best player, and continued with four-time All-American Jamie.

Tanner has known the Neushuls for years. While at Stanford, Tanner played against Ryann’s father, Peter, who was teammates with Tanner’s two brothers at UC Santa Barbara. Tanner also is well-versed in the type of players who come out of coach Cathy Neushul’s Santa Barbara 805 club program, which is renowned for producing players rich in fundamentals, intelligent in their understanding of the sport and who play the game the right way.

“My first interaction with Ryann, she was nine,” Tanner said. “It was at the U.S. Water Polo Summer Nationals. She came up and introduced herself to me. She explained to me how things were going to work with her sisters and what they were going to do for college. And she explained how she was going to Harvard, and wasn’t going to play for me.”

As young Ryann described how the future would play out, Tanner had to laugh.

“What she shared with me wasn’t just off the top of her head,” Tanner said. “She spent a lot of time contemplating these topics.”

By this time, Kiley and Jamie -- seven and 4 ½ years older than Ryann -- were making themselves known. Kiley and Jamie would go on to win three NCAA championships each for Stanford, joining forces on the 2014 and 2015 title teams.

All three sisters have followed a common path: through club, college, national team, and the Olympics. But each have their own attributes, personalities, and style.

“Kiley is an incredible, powerful, yet elegant athlete,” Tanner said. “It is absolutely a work of art watching her play.

“Jamie has the intellect, the problem-solving, big-picture awareness of things that fit with her quiet disposition. She notices everything as a player and as a person.

“And Ryann is expressive, very powerful, and also dramatic in that you can feel the intensity emanating from her.”

Cathy puts it this way:

“Kiley was precision, just one of the most skilled athletes that you could ever imagine. If we went to war, she would be up in a tree with a bow and arrow picking people off, and she would never miss.

“Jamie had the best water polo mind I’ve ever seen. She was spontaneous. She could formulate plans. She would be the person behind the scenes making the strategy, and it would be executed perfectly.

“And Ryann would be on the front, leading the charge, coming out of the Trojan horse. Bull in a china shop.”

IT WASN’T ALL water polo. 

The family had season passes to Disneyland. They went to Knott’s Berry Farm and Magic Mountain. They loved “Saturday Night Live” and “Modern Family.” They walk on the beach, often with dogs Gretel and Hazel.

Cathy, a physical therapist, continues to rise at 5 a.m. four mornings a week to swim. She ends her day coaching.

Peter loves the sport through and through. He is a historian of U.S. water polo, coaches a little on the side and continues to play at the masters’ level. He watches the sport whenever he can, and has been to nearly every game of his daughters’ lives and certainly every one of Ryann’s games this season. He even followed Kiley and Jamie to a World Cup tournament in Surgut, Siberia, always with a video camera in hand. 

“Everybody thinks of our family as the water polo family,” Cathy said. “The reality is, we didn’t plan any of this. Our goal was to just get these kids as tired as possible and we happen to live in a place where there’s water and our background was water polo. It was a no-brainer to put them in that. But we started to realize pretty quickly that we had some pretty athletic kids, and we did our best to teach them a good work ethic. I think that’s why they ended up where they are.

“It’s also really important to emphasize that there’s so much more to Ryann and all three of our daughters than water polo. Ryann has a love for life that is unparalleled. She enjoys everything she does and gets the most out of it.”

For example, in one of the twice-yearly team speaker series, each player is required to give to the team, Ryann chose the subject, “Humor Wins Championships.” If you’re not willing to laugh at yourself, your coach, or something funny that a teammate did, then you’re not living in the present, she said, and being present is key to success in sport.

An example: When Stanford flew to Indiana for the Midwest Invitational in February, Ryann, feeling generous, announced to her teammates, “Guys, I’m buying the plane Wi-Fi on this flight! I need to grind and get my work done. We aren’t going to have any time when we get to Indiana.”

Her teammates cheered. One player, Jackie King, told Ryann, “I was going to sleep, but honestly, it sounds like a good idea.”

Ten minutes later, Ryann was sound asleep. And no Wi-Fi.

King snapped a picture of Neushul, head back, mouth open, catching Z’s, and posted the image to Instagram with the caption: “yeah im gonna buy plane wifi and do work the whole flight”.

Even Ryann thought that was funny. 

Ryann thinks she gets her humor from Peter. There are flavors of sarcasm and honesty that permeate the Neushul household. 

“What I appreciate most about my father is that he tells me what I need to hear, not what I want to hear,” Ryann said. “And to me, that is the biggest kindness you can show a person you love. I don’t want someone around who, when there’s food stuck in your teeth, won’t point it out. The great thing about my dad is he will always tell you — ‘There’s food in your mouth, Sweetie. Just thought you should know.’ Or, in the case of water polo, ‘Yeah, I think you could have done better there. Work on that shot in practice.’”

Cathy is no-nonsense. In parenting and coaching, there are rules to follow. And if there is a rule,  it must be followed. Unapologetically strict, Cathy kicked out Ryann out of her share of practices, holding her daughters to the highest of standards.

When Ryann was 13, she told her mom that she was too tired to go to soccer practice.

“OK,” Cathy said. “If we’re going to miss this practice, we’re done with soccer forever.”

“Just one practice?”

“You can’t decide when you want to go to practice. This isn’t optional. If you’re not buying into a team and committed to going, you’re done.”

Cathy doesn’t recall that conversation, but agrees it’s something she would have said. Ryann indeed never played soccer again, and the lesson stuck, though she never would have done the same in water polo, which she enjoyed more anyway. It emphasized the importance of showing up and committing to a team.

“I feel this sense of loyalty and honor to any team I’m on, because of how important my mom stressed that,” Ryann said. “You don’t get a player like myself or my sisters without a mother who’s pushing the importance of it.”

Kiley, a USA Water Polo Hall of Famer, recently was hired to give a personal hour-long training session to a young player. The thought amused her. Kiley never had a private lesson, partly because each day in the pool with her parents and sisters was a personal training session of its own.

When Ryann was nine and Kiley already a 16-year-old star, Kiley took her little sister into the pool and dared Ryann to block her shot. Ryann didn’t have a chance, but Kiley never relented.

“You need to get your block up because I’m going to keep shooting,” Kiley told her.

Shot after shot after shot, these were the types of lessons that can’t be bought.

“When I played against Ryann, I never grabbed her suit,” Kiley said. “I never kicked her. I never punched her. I never had to kick off of her to do something. I would say 95 percent of water polo players need to do that. But against Ryann, I was always like, ‘I will beat you and I will do it the right way.’”

Ryann welcomed these trials, and continues to challenge herself in any way possible. 

“This game makes you fight, it makes you find the will,” she said. “Sometimes, it feels like you got hit by a car, and you’ve got to keep playing. You have to dig deep – you have to dig real keep – and that digging deep is what prepares you for the Olympic Games. If you don’t have that hard work, if you don’t have that toughness, then you don’t have anything to draw from.”

On a similar subject, Ryann recalled this story:

“I want to get faster at swimming,” a teammate once asked at practice. “How do I do that?”

Aria Fischer, a former Cardinal who won gold in Rio, mulled the question over and came up with this answer.

“You wake up and you swim,” Fischer said. “And the next day, you wake up and you swim again. And the day after that, you wake up and swim. Day after that … swim. You swim and then you swim and then you swim until you get faster.”

In other words, you can’t do it without the work.

“In water polo, you’re always tired,” Neushul said. “So, if you make decisions while you’re super rested all the time in practice, it may look really beautiful, but then you’re going to get in the game and you know, this Italian woman’s going to be hitting you, and you’re going to have to make a decision.

“That’s what water polo is. It’s being pushed to your physical and mental limit. Every week you’re like, How am I going to get up tomorrow? But you get up. The human body, and your mentality, can do so much more than you think it can.”

A NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP at Stanford came early, as a freshman in 2019. Ryann detoured for two years to train with the U.S. national team for the Tokyo Games, enduring a wave of emotions as she eventually was cut while Jamie made the team and won gold.

After winning two more national titles, in 2022 and 2023, Neushul returned to the national team full-time for another shot at Olympic glory, most likely as an attacker. Neushul has a great offensive skill, scoring 223 goals in her Stanford career, recently passing Kiley to move into sixth place all-time.

But after losing several defenders after Tokyo, such as former Stanford stars Aria and Makenzie Fischer and Melissa Seidemann, the U.S. found itself with sizable holes on defense. National team coach Adam Krikorian turned to Neushul. Though her short 5-foot-7 frame would leave her at a disadvantage while guarding much much bigger players, Neushul, a utility player who can play multiple positions, accepted without knowing where it would lead.

“My will and desire to beat the person in front of me continues to be my greatest power,” she said. “I’m not the most beautiful player. I’m just willing to fight for it. You’ve got to go to war with what you have. I’m 5-7, so that’s what I have.”

In learning the position, Neushul considered what makes her frustrated on offense – wrist grabbing, elbow grabbing, suit grabbing, leg kicks. She has turned those into weapons on defense.

At the 2022 World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, Neushul was placed on defense late in games. In the championship game, she guarded the Hungarian sets throughout the final quarter and helped the U.S. to a 9-7 victory. Though she scored multiple goals in the game, her defense was key.

Cathy believes Ryann was chosen for the role, despite no experience as a defender, because of her relentless work ethic and willingness to learn.

“She doesn’t care if she scores goals, she just wants to win,” Cathy said.

But there were some caveats with the switch.

“In Budapest, I welcomed the role and enjoyed it, primarily because I was able to play as an attacker throughout the game,” Ryann said.

However, the retirement of Stephania Haralabidis left an even greater hole in the U.S. defense. By the 2023 World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, Neushul was a full-time center defender.

“At first, I didn’t understand why,” she said. “We won a world championship in 2022 while I was defending, but it wasn’t the only thing that I did. I was angry, annoyed, and hated defending, to be honest. 

“I was left with a choice to either hate the position or to see it as a challenge and embrace it.”

To accept meant burying her offensive talent and the parts of her game she enjoyed the most.

“I decided that even though I didn’t like the position, I wasn’t going to be a throwaway defender,” Neushul said. “I was going to do everything I could to become the best defender in the time I was given. Above all else, I was going to do everything I could to help my team win because I hate losing far more than I hate defending. And, so, I did.”

Neushul spent exhaustive film study on every opposing center, talked to past and present U.S. defenders on techniques and strategies, and hit the weight room hard to build her legs. Neushul was all in.

“When I commit to anything in my life, I commit 100 percent,” she said.

Kiley saw the difference when she saw Ryann lift herself for a pass and her entire suit came completely out of the water. That’s strength.  

By Paris, Neushul was entrenched at center defender and was as prepared as possible to guard every center on every team. 

But it wasn’t enough.

“Yes, she can say she’s an Olympian, but it’s different than saying, ‘I’m an Olympic medalist, let alone a gold medalist,” said Roemer, a two-time NCAA champion and three-time All-American. “It hurt. It hurt a lot.”

All that work, all that effort. All for what? A now-murky future. One more Olympic push, for Los Angeles in 2028? Or, already-delayed med school?

“I don’t know if anyone will ever really understand where she’s at,” Roemer said. “She trained for four years, getting the crap beat out of her that first quad. Coming back, being converted to a defender, and then losing the way we did when she was hoping to potentially just go right into med school. 

“It’s a life-changing outcome, especially when you know you can earn something and don’t get it. Do I come back? Do I not come back? It’s four years. It’s a big commitment.”

IN A WRITING assignment for a winter quarter class, Ryann recalled a pain that was tempered by tenderness.

“I didn’t dream of making it to an Olympics, I dreamed of winning it,” she wrote. “In part because I’d watched both my older sisters do it before me … somehow this amazing feat became normal to me.”

And yet, in that moment, “These were the only two people in the world who understood what I sacrificed, how hard I worked to be on that stage, and how much it hurt me to lose.

“In the middle of a crowd, we cried together. And that is what really mattered to me in the end — my family.

“Even as my dreams crashed and burned in front of me, even though I was the only Neushul without a gold medal … my sisters loved me.”