When Yvette Higgins shot from near halfway in the dying seconds of the inaugural women’s Olympic gold-medal match on September 23, 2000, she could not have known what a pandora’s box she had unlocked.
Playing in the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre in front of a women’s world-record 17,000 roaring spectators, including the Australian Prime Minister, Higgins fired the ball high and left and it was inadvertently tipped into goal by the United States of American centre defender past the outstretched arm of the goalkeeper with 1.3 seconds registered on the clock and the score now 4-3 in the Aussies’ favour. USA shot in the tumult but Liz Weekes saved the ball and water polo — and women’s water polo, in particular, was etched into the sporting framework of the sports-mad nation’s psyche.
It elevated Australia’s medal tally, lifted water polo into the minds of the nation and garnered unprecedented television and media coverage.
Earlier in the week, Australia lost most of its costumes, torn to shreds in the opening two matches and needed special compensation to buy new, non-team bathers to make the third match. Players were swapping the rags with bench players, changing on the pool-deck, which gained international attention. The number of journalists from day one to day three was more than tripled and a late-night television show started taking notice, leading each night with how many bathers were torn from the team.
While water polo had “arrived” in Sydney, it started a revolution for the expansion of the sport, not only within Australia, but also — and more importantly — in the USA where the sport exploded; becoming an omnipresent programme at colleges and universities and elevated that nation to the best in the world for about a decade.
In fact, USA filled a podium spot for the first six editions until finishing fourth in Paris last year — a collection that included three consecutive gold medals from 2012 to 2020. And then there were the multitude of World League and World Cup crowns.
This year, USA, the returning world champion from Doha last year, was beaten in the gold-medal final by Olympic champion Spain.
No Funding Support
USA Water Polo Executive Director of the time, Bruce Wigo, said: “When I started as USWP ED, women made up (and this is from memory) less than 15 per cent of USWP membership and USWP received no funding support from the USOC for women.
“Here is a video we produced to promote sport that led to exhibition sport status in 1996 that we presented to FINA, and the Australians replaced the audio with an Australian presenter before the Australia Olympic Committee — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kByWm-_BdPM”
Much of the huge success of the USA programme was down to incumbent head coach Adam Krikorian but the earlier years saw Guy Baker, also a UCLA alumni water polo coach, control the women’s team.
He could not achieve Olympic glory as the team settled for silver, bronze, silver before hitting the top spot at London 2012, after his reign.
Sydney was the launching pad for what women’s water polo has achieved today with full squads mirroring the men at Olympic level, something unheard of and unthinkable not so many years ago.
Nations are coming out of the woodwork at all levels of the sport and playing on the world stage with the likes of Croatia and Israel testing the top groupings.
Before USA’s dominance in the 2010s, Italy came through with the 2004 crown and Netherlands at Beijing 2008. Now Spain is the best in the world, becoming the fifth nation to win Olympic gold — quite a spread.
Sydney's Silver Lining
Kyle Utsumi, himself a world champion junior women’s coach, penned a book — Sydney’s Silver Lining with a sub-title, The story of America’s most important water polo team and the journey to the greatest game in history.
Nearly 400 pages, it documents the team, its history, its highs and lows and profiles each player.
He talks of Maureen O’Toole, the oldest member of the USA team who competed from 1977 to 1994. Like O’Toole, Australia’s Debbie Watson, a long-term national team member thought her competition days were over until the worldwide thrust for Olympic inclusion spearheaded by Australia, witnessed the decision to include six teams in Sydney.
“When I came out of retirement, I had a lot of what you would call my fiends on the team, and it dwindled down as we went, “O’Toole said. “A lot of older players started and slowly got cut or decided to quit. As far as playing with youngers players, it wasn’t a problem for me at all. I loved it.”
Baker was looking for younger players, but O’Toole said Baker was different from other coaches as he had a “very strict system”.
Watson, who won Olympic, World and World Cup crowns — the first to do so and still only one of a few — was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame like O’Toole. She spoke to Scoring Goals on the eve of the anniversary.
“We had nine members of the gold-medal team gather in Sydney at the weekend for celebrations. Five of us went to a stadium event, nine had lunch on Saturday and six of us got together on Sunday.
“We liked each other and sacrificed for each other. We didn’t always agree, but we always battled and sacrificed for each other.
“We all appreciated what everyone went through and we were just so happy to see each other… and we still ask each other stupid questions,” she said.
“We’re like sisters. There’s no uncomfortableness. We go straight back into where we were and we enjoy each other’s company.”
On what it meant to win the gold: “It created opportunity. We had so much fun. We went to so many events, met so many people and got to do things we would never have done otherwise.”
Watson said that so many people shared the moment. “Having the Games in Australia.
It felt like everyone was there and the incredible friendship that goes with it. It’s been amazing.”
Who Were The Luminaries?
Many have stayed active in water polo with Heather Moody the most prominent, being involved in the USA women’s programme after retiring in 2004 with bronze and continuing on the bench until winning gold as an assistant coach in London 2012. She also led USA to world championship gold in Montreal 2005 as head coach.
On the Aussie side, Bronwyn Smith (nee Mayer) leads the women’s programme and has been on pool deck with assistant coach Taryn Woods for many years, including the silver-medal effort in Paris 2024 and in Singapore recently.
Sydney started fine careers for Brenda Villa and Heather Petri who won four consecutive medals — silver, bronze, silver and gold — still the only two players with this record.
Pioneers For Olympic Inclusion
“The Olympic inclusion of women's water polo had a dramatic impact on women's water polo, not only in the USA but around the world,” says Wigo.
“But it wasn't just the 2000 Games, but also the years leading up to the announcement in 1997. There were many people working behind the scenes for decades, starting with Bert Shaw and Becky Shaw, whose son Tim Shaw was a Sullivan Award-winning swimmer and 1984 US Olympic water polo player in 1984. Dr Ralph Hale and his wife Jane Hale (Bert and Ralph were both presidents of USA Water Polo); the unstoppable Sandy Nita; Olga Pinciroli from Brazil and Thea De Witt from the Netherlands. As well as Rich Foster (USWP president in the early 1990s).
“All of them are either in the USA Water Polo Hall of Fame or International Swimming Hall of Fame. The slow growth of women's water in schools began in the early 1980s because of Title IX and then began to accelerate with the prospect of the sport being included in the 1996 Olympic Games.”
From the Australian point of view, John Whitehouse and Leanne Barnes were to the forefront, as was Pat Jones; while the airport protest when the FINA President arrived for the 1995 FINA World Cup in Sydney was tantamount in gaining international recognition and applied pressure on FINA and the International Olympic Committee.
Editor’s Note
I was on the pool deck directly behind the USA team bench on September 23 and witnessed the long pass out to Higgins from Simone Hankin and the subsequent shot, which might have been a high pass to Hankin. I had to spend a lot of time with the USA media describing what happened in those final seconds.
The day still remains one of the highlights of my long career with its wild celebrations of a home victory, a happy Prime Minister mixing with the athletes and a rather subdued media conference that featured, Baker, captain Julie Swail, O’Toole and the entire Aussie team. Only Utsumi, myself and a lone USA journalist attended to ask questions. The question from the USA journalist? “Why did you not win?”
O’Toole, Villa, Petri, Watson and Aussie skipper Bridgitte Gusterson have all been inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame.