Team USA Reaches Mile High Goals in Defeat of Japan

(Photo: Jeff Cable, Jeff Cable’s Photography Blog)

For those who follow water polo, in some ways the fact that USA’s Women’s team won their first game in the preliminary round in Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics was not surprising.  After all they are the top-ranked team in the world. What would end up surprising people would be the number of goals they scored and milestones they reached in their very first game.

The first quarter of the game saw USA garner the first point of the game and the preliminary round with a centre shot from Maggie Steffens 21 seconds in. Later came a costly turnover from Japan at 6:18 of the opener, giving Steffens the opportunity to put the USA women up by two 11 seconds later.

Japan managed to cut that lead in half while on the power play two seconds after Allys Williams was whistled out. Japan then tried to tie things up off a shot by Inaba Akari but Ashleigh Johnson was up to the task and USA capitalized on a counter attack to regain a two-goal lead from Olympic rookie Paige Hauschild.

Melissa Seidemann was sent off for an exclusion involving a situation in the 6-meter free throw area and once again Japan capitalized with the extra player, this time when Arima Yumi got the ball past Johnson and once again saw Team Japan within one to tie the game. Japan’s first even strength goal finally came about with 3:39 remaining in the first quarter.

Team USA took the tie in stride and doubled down, scoring an additional five goals before the clock ran out in the first quarter. The second period was all Team USA as the women added another six goals to their total, bringing their score to an Olympic record of 14 goals in a half.

The third quarter saw Team USA notch another three goals putting them up 17-3. Tokyo’s head coach, Motomiya Makihiro, used one of his timeouts and after that Koide Miku scored Japan’s fourth and last goal of the game.

In the remaining time of the third quarter, Team USA added another four goals to go up 21-4 and they would finish the game with a total of 25, marking another Olympic record.

Of the 25 goals, five (3, 1, 0, 1) were attributed to the team’s captain, Steffens. Adding another five goals (1, 2, 1, 1) in the game was Stephania Haralabidis, a newcomer to the Olympics. Aria Fisher (1,1, 2, 0) and Maddie Musselman (2, 2,0,0) each picked up four goals. Rounding out the top scorers were Hauschild (1, 0, 1, 0) and Kaleigh Gilchrist (0, 0, 1, 1) each with two. These six players combined for 22 of the goals scored by Team USA.

Meanwhile backing them up was Johnson, who made sure very few shots made it into the net for Japan. She stopped all ten active shots along with a centre shot, three extra player shots and a counter attack shot blocking 15 of the 19 shots she saw for a 79% save percentage. As ever, Johnson did it all while making it look easy, which of course is the mark of a great goalkeeper.

Note: If you love the photo, be sure to check out more by visiting Jeff Cable’s Photography Blog here.