USA Women Come on Strong at the End to Get the Win

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

After Team USA Women’s blistering win against Japan in the opening game, scoring 25 goals, an Olympic record, their play against China was a more evenly matched game throughout much of play.

Unlike some sports where possession is critical to winning, water polo’s ever-changing possession means that a team that is perhaps down by a goal or two early in a game most certainly can come back. The most important aspect is to not lose focus or begin to take unnecessary fouls that will give the opposition the extra player advantage.

One of the areas that the USA women excel is at the start of each quarter. They usually win the sprints and such was the case for Rachel Fattel, who won all four in this game.  The women are also extremely effective at good coverage when in the defensive end.

Fattel not only won each of the sprints, but she also put Team USA on the board first at 7:21 of the first period. From that point the goals would mostly alternate from team to team, though China did go up 4-2 at 2:39 of the first period. The veterans on Team USA continued to remain focused and by the end of the opening eight minutes they had tied the game.

China’s goalkeeper, Shen Yineng, was one of the strongest players for her team and had a huge save on Maddie Musselman just after China had gone up 4-2. She would end the game having saved 11 of the 23 shots she saw for a respectable 48%. At the other end, Ashleigh Johnson wasn’t nearly as busy, seeing only 14 shots in the game and denying seven.

The second quarter saw Team USA take the lead at 7:38 and they sustained that one-goal lead for 4:52 of the second before China’s Wang Huan put an active shot in. In the remaining 2:46, USA’s Maggie Steffens gave her team the lead with an extra player shot but then China’s Lu Yiwen knotted the game again and it would remain tied at 6-6 when the half ended.

The third quarter saw the Americans pick up the pace a bit and begin to pull away from China, but not until the last 1:46 of that period, when Paige Hauschild secured a counter attack shot. Aria Fischer followed, putting home a centre shot and then her sister Makenzie Fischer gave USA a comfortable lead at 0:07 of the third with an active shot. Team USA was up 9-6.

During the third, just after Aria Fischer scored the eighth goal, USA’s head coach, Adam Krikorian, was given a yellow card. He was quite upset at what he deemed had been poor officiating. It had been obvious that he wasn’t happy at various stages of the game.

The third quarter also saw blood. While water polo is definitely an intense game with opponents touching each other in an attempt to keep each other from scoring, you do not usually see blood. Steffens had taken an elbow to her nose in the heat of combat and had to get looked at out of the water and patched up. She didn’t let a little injury stop her though. She was right back in the water for the fourth quarter.

Makenzie Fischer would add another marker in the fourth quarter to put the Americans up 10-6. The Chinese weren’t giving up and Chen Xiao gave her team their seventh and final goal of the game. Meanwhile the American women were not quite done with their scoring. They added two more goals before the game was over to finish with a 12-7 win.

In the end, the American women earned their second win of the preliminary round and would turn their attention to their next game against Hungary.

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