U.S. water polo suffered a heartbreaking shootout loss to Australia on Thursday. Ashleigh Johnson and Maggie Steffens discuss trying to move forward.
Sabrina van der Sloot scored with .7 seconds remaining, and the Netherlands beat the United States 11-10 for the bronze medal in women's water polo at the Paris Olympics on Saturday.
The Netherlands got the ball back following a U.S. turnover with 9 seconds left. Coach Eva Doudesis had goalkeeper Laura Aarts join the attack for a 7-on-6 opportunity, and Van der Sloot beat Ashleigh Johnson into the right side.
Van der Sloot finished with six goals on seven shots, leading the Dutch rally after the team trailed 7-3 at halftime and 10-7 midway through the fourth quarter.
“I thought that they were going to attack me because I already scored five balls,” she said of the final sequence. “So yeah, I was like, ‘Well if you’re not going to attack me, I’m going to shoot it,’ and it was amazing that it went in."
Australia and Spain play for the gold medal at Paris La Defense Arena later Saturday.
It was the second women's water polo medal for the Netherlands after it won gold at the 2008 Olympics. It also won the European championships in January.
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The U.S. was looking for an unprecedented fourth consecutive gold medal going into the Olympics. Then it blew a 5-2 halftime lead in a 14-13 loss to Australia in a penalty shootout in the semis.
It struggled to score once again after Jenna Flynn's power-play goal made it 10-7 with 4:26 left.
“We didn't handle that very well,” U.S. coach Adam Krikorian said. “Yeah, you know it's a big moment and it seemed a little bit too big at times, to be honest. ... Sometimes, in these big games, it’s about who’s able to play with the courage and just be able to execute kind of towards the end of the game, and obviously they did a much better job of that.”
The U.S. had been the only country to medal in each women's water polo tournament at the Olympics since it started in 2000.
“We’ve talked about just trying to learn from our mistakes and getting better,” U.S. captain Maggie Steffens said. “And I feel today we struggled to continually learn from our mistakes. We gave up some really easy counter-attack goals, and not forcing Holland to score difficult goals when we’re up by three.”
