Team USA Men Finish in 6th Place at Olympics

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

On Sunday morning, August 8, the USA Men’s Water Polo Team took on the men from Croatia to determine their final finish in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. They wanted to come in higher than they had in Rio in 2016, and by making it to the quarterfinals they did. In Rio they took 10th place. At Tokyo the Americans were eliminated by Spain in the quarterfinals on August 4th in a tough game. They went on to defeat Italy in their first classification game on August 6th.

It definitely wasn’t the game that the USA team had hoped for. Despite getting on the board first with a couple of goals from Johnny Hooper and Max Irving, Croatia continued to battle. They scored their first goal at 5:45 of the first. Alex Bowen put USA up by two goals at 5:04. Croatia responded a minute later getting back within one.

The second quarter saw Croatia tie the game at 7:23 while on the power play after Luca Cupido was sent off. From that point on, it was the Americans who were having to play catch up, which they never did. By the end of the half, Croatia was leading 6-5. During the third quarter the Croatians put in four goals as compared to the two that USA managed, giving Croatia a 10-7 lead.

Team USA certainly wasn’t going away. And there was a question, certainly by some of the team and USA’s head coach Dejan Udovicic, on a couple of the calls that went against the United States. Coach Udovicic was quite vocal, and it earned him a yellow card. Even Drew Holland, who was in net for the Americans, was commenting to the officials about a couple of the calls.

In addition to what appeared to be many exclusions to both teams—including a couple of double exclusions—there were three penalty throws awarded: two for Croatia and one for USA.

As the clock ticked down it was not to go Team USA’s way. Croatia won with a score of 14-11 to be awarded the fifth place, while USA found themselves finishing in sixth place. This was still a four-slot improvement over their games in Rio, but there was disappointment on some of their faces.

Because there are no professional water polo teams or leagues in the United States, many of Team USA’s men who have continued to play beyond college have done so in Europe. Playing in the Olympics pits them against some of their teammates and when some of the Americans haven’t been playing with the Croatians, they seem to find themselves up against them frequently during international competitions.

“Oh, every single one of them. I mean, we’ve played Croatia a lot. We’ve matched up with them a lot in the past. They were in our bracket in 2019 for World Championships. We were there in early February and we had like a two-game match with them before. I played with like four of the guys that are on that team—Lovre [Milos], [Luka] Bukic ,[Ivan] Marcelic, and [Josip] Vrlic. I played with all four of them and Alex Obert played with I think four or five of them. [Ben] Hallock played with one of them. I think there’s like three of them that we haven’t played with. But we’ve played against all of them so many times. Outside the water they’re good friends. Inside the water we get in a tussel and we talk sh%t. It’s a good friendship.”

These two teams will certainly see each other sooner than the three years until Paris 2024, and it will be interesting to see how the teams look over the next few years. Both teams had a player in Tokyo representing his country in his fifth Olympics. For the United States it was Jesse Smith and for Croatia it was Javier Garcia Gadea.

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