speaker-0: Welcome to this podcast.

speaker-1: Water Polo Expert Talk. Get the insights.

speaker-0: Probably one of my favorite game.

speaker-1: But when you mentioned, really, so this is for most of the people, yeah, no situation which will occur during their life that you have the chance to play Olympic quarterfinals, semifinal, and then have a shootout, yeah? I would expect a really special situation where you have to be ready mentally. on so many aspects, I would say. Is it such a special thing at the end? regarding...

speaker-0: It wasn't the only shootout we had. It's a crushing amount of pressure. You have to be able to hold it up. You have to be able to hold through it and really be able to trust yourself to do the right thing in the right moment.

speaker-1: Yeah Bye.

speaker-1: Yeah, and maybe then in addition to the thing you said before, that you have the confidence and also the other people in your team or your teammates have the confidence in each other. Yeah, so that makes it not easier, but brings you maybe in a better position or situation to say, OK, I'm here and I will score the goal right now.

speaker-0: yeah. No, it's it, it is. I mean, I think it is easier. I think it does. It makes a huge amount of difference knowing that your teammate has your back. and that they, they believe in you and you believe in that. I think it's, think it's, mean, that's part of being a team. And when you're in that position, when it's all in the line, that's when it really comes out, you know, that's the, that's, that's when it really matters is knowing that you have your teammates back and they have your back. When, when, when it's do or die. And yeah, no, it was, I mean, incredible shootout. We take that move on to the next round, move on to the, move onto the semifinal. And, uh, honestly, it's a very, a lot of regret on that game. Um, I don't like we, I mean, we played with everything we had. There's no like regret in the way that of how we played or how much effort we put into the game. Um, but. It was, I mean, more just regret of the outcome. You know, we, I think we lost 10-6 to Serbia who ended up going all the way to win. And, yeah, I mean, there was that, the one, the one thing I do, one of the things I do remember very vividly in that game was that there was a, there was a picture that was posted afterwards from, I think, Total Water Polo. was the sky, it was the sky view or the top view, top down view of, Mondich taking a foul outside six, seven meters from, the three position from up top. we had all six players, all six field players shop locking at one time. And I mean, they were made, they were kind of making the joke of like, this is what you need to do to stop Mondich. And it's like, well, yeah, I mean, he is the best player in the world. mean, like he, he's an incredible shooter, like just top to bottom, really, really good water polo player. But I think it was more of that just showed the dedication of the team that everybody was going to put their body on the line to stop one goal. And he didn't score that. He didn't score that one. We blocked it. it was, I mean, at that point, like, but you kind of have to, if you have six people with the hands up. But yeah, no, it's, mean, yeah, we had a difficult time that game, obviously, and we not, not, not playing for the gold was.

speaker-0: Obviously it's a little bit heartbreaking, but being able to recuperate and be able to just have each other's backs is like, we've got one more game. We've got one more chance at a medal and doing everything we could to get there and to win the medal. with Hungary on the other side. We knew we had played them a lot recently too. We had them in the third place game with the World Cup in 2023, which obviously there was the controversy with that game about us winning the challenge from the referee challenge and everything. But I mean, that's the first game I've ever been in that. Yeah, that we've actually won a challenge. I mean, I've heard, I've heard many times people like been in games where coaches have challenged before and there was just like everybody, a lot of people just said no. And a lot of, mean, it it, it sometimes it's, it's how the rule is interpreted, but this was, we had something clear and definitive to where we had, there was the penalty. they had six players in, they were only supposed to have five. was the referee's fault. Like it's not like, it's not like. not Hungary's fault for doing it. So I think the referee waved him in, which was just incorrect. getting that second opportunity and being able to restarting, be able to get that penalty and to tie it up immediately and then win that game. which I mean, after, after the final that already played, get back in form up for 20 minutes and then play the last four or five minutes again, you would think that you would, your body would recover. A little bit. didn't like at all. Just as tired as I was for the three hours before. But no, mean, we thought that that another game to talk about, but we knew like when we had them again, like the other game we had against them was the quarterfinal for Fukuoka. Yeah, Fukuoka.

speaker-1: Yeah

speaker-0: We had them in the quarterfinals of that tournament too. We ended up losing by one. And one of the things from that game was I ended up taking the last shot we had, which was on a six on five. And I mean, one of those mistakes that's just engraved into your brain. No, no, it was a bad shot. I remember seeing the video afterwards saying like, Wow, that guy's wide open. I should have just one more pass. had the two or three seconds left where I could have given it to him. But because that was engraved in my brain and because I knew that happened, the same exact situation happened and that third place game. was early on, first quarter. We're running the same play. They're running the same defense. And instead of shooting it, pass it to the open guy and we scored. it was something that it's, it's no, no, it's something that like, it's that I had been waiting for that second, that opportunity again. It was going to happen.

speaker-1: Just erase the first situation from the previous game.

speaker-0: No, I mean, it's something that is just like, knew it was something that it's I remembered and it's something that you have to do as a, as an athlete is you have to remember those mistakes and you have like, don't get a lot of times to re to correct them, but sometimes it happens again. And no, I was, I was ready for it. I saw the situation. I knew like getting the ball back. I knew what I was going to do was going to make a big fake. They're going to jump at me and I dropped it down to the post. was wide open and Yeah, I knew the exact situation. had a little bit of redemption there. Because I think that was for Chase Doddsville in the first quarter, first or second quarter. So I mean, that's something that I remember specifically just because of the initial failure and being able to have that redemption moment just personally for my career. But it's also something just to remember as a sportman and be able to like, like remember your failures because you're going to get another opportunity. One of the, one of the beauties of sport. And then, yeah, we had a, mean, the game was back and forth. went, we tied it and they scored two goals in the fourth quarter to put us down to with two minutes left and another six on five. Again, was able to score that goal to put us within one and then. Doube with with similar similar shot similar position for the shot for him to score to tie it up and throw us into the shootout and then. I mean, big game Adrian. Shootout going three like like stop holding hungry to over three on a shootout is I mean. Incredible. And I was, again, lucky enough, I'm honestly to to have the honor to have the last goal and that last penalty because I was shooting third. So had the last goal, the last penalty for before the bronze. I mean, no.

speaker-1: The rest is unbelievable.

speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah.

speaker-1: Yeah, wow. Yeah, so by the way, we were also in Paris during the last weekend of the games. So same final and final. So we were also on the pool. And yeah, it was really also amazing from outside of the pool. the general atmosphere at the weekend. So I would assume that maybe during the week or during the early stages of the tournament. The atmosphere was not really that atmosphere, which was on Friday, Saturday, Sunday at the end. But it was amazing from a customer or from a viewer point of view.

speaker-0: yeah. No, I, I, but I would, I would actually contend with that a little bit. The first cup, the, the games that we were a part of, think we had everything was sold out from how I saw it. Smaller venue for the first four games. Cause that's usually how that's how it's been for the last three Olympics. We have one venue and the swimmers have another, have the other venue. We take over the swimmers venue when they're done. Cause I mean, we're there the whole time. I think it's the whole thing. We, we, get the cool thing. We get to meet everybody. Bad thing is that we're there for the full Olympic experience. We're there from opening to closing. the medal round was the day of closing ceremony. it's a blessing and a curse because it's a long tournament. And the good thing is you have opportunities to correct mistakes and to

speaker-1: Absolutely,

speaker-0: continue on with the fight, but other sports, it's, you messed up. You're, you're done. Goodbye. Like pack your stuff. You're gone. And that's, mean, that's also tragic. You know, that's, I couldn't imagine doing that if it was just a one game, one, one, one loss elimination tournament from the Olympics would be insane. Like nobody would want to do that. But no, it's, there's. I think the crowd was amazing. Because we moved into a lot of fans for the last game of the group play. now for us, that was the Croatia game. And it was packed. The quarterfinals packed, the semifinals packed, and the finals packed. mean, was standing room only. was an incredible environment. Super loud.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: It was amazing. There's a lot of people that I knew in the crowd and a lot of people from the club in Paris that were there. Friends, was good to see them all. was good to post game, just a good wave or a hug if they're close enough to the barrier. But no, was an incredible experience to have even more than the... even more than just like friends and family, because I had a lot of family there. My mom, my dad, my wife, or at that point, soon to be wife, a lot of her family ended up coming out too. it was, I mean, it was an amazing experience to do that in front of friends and family. yeah.

speaker-1: Still unbelievable, yeah, so with the bronze medal somehow.

speaker-0: Oh yeah, no, it's I still look at it and it's I mean, it's I mean, it's it's 90 % of the dream come true, you know, it's it's it's pretty great just because I mean, going through the entire like rebuild process from 2013, because we had so many people from 2012 retire. I think we had I think we had like eight, eight or nine people retire from 2012 to 2013. cause the only returning Olympians on that Rio team were Tony, Jesse, Merrill, John.

speaker-0: And that's it. No, that's it. I'm Jesse Merrill John. Yeah, I think that's it. So you have four returners from, so nine people retire and you got to rebuild. And then the next Olympics, another seven retire and people who weren't supposed to, people who after one decided to retire and.

speaker-1: Yeah, so it's not really an easy situation. Yeah. So that you have to rebuild the team more or less each Olympic Games or before each of Olympic circles. When you have four, five, six, seven people retiring and then maybe one or two coming back. It's not really an easy situation.

speaker-0: No. So then being able to rebuild and having so many guys stay on from Tokyo to, cause we only had three changes on the roster and it wasn't, and there was only one retirement that was, that was Jesse. but you, so you have one retirement and so you have one guy and then two people replacing, two people to, to like, changing the goalie, changing one of the defenders, and then one guy who just beat out another guy.

speaker-1: Yeah, so which is then the better situation. Yeah. When we have more people coming to the team than leaving the team.

speaker-0: Yeah. So I mean, that was, we were in, I think we were in a prime position and we had some opportunities within world championships that we didn't go our way and we missed our opportunities to really do have a successful world championships to kind of cement our place as a top team and didn't get the opportunity. but being able to come through during the Olympics was, think there were some people who really believed in us and thought that we had what it took. Obviously we did, I mean, the larger world, most of the, I don't think many of the European teams really believe that we could get to that position. I feel like there's been. There's been times where we've heard or I've heard of how other people think of how other teams thought of us or how other teams really like actually thought about us and how sometimes they say it's like, oh, it's a fake final with the U S in the, in the final. It's like, okay, that's

speaker-1: Fake final, yeah, so this is strange statement.

speaker-0: Well, I mean, it's it's insulting. It's really like, well, I mean, we made it there. Like we're there. Like it's it's. So knowing that and being able to kind of prove that, we've we've got a metal so.

speaker-1: And then you will also have the happy end at the end on your side. So with the bronze medal and the Olympics. it's enough said to the people who are not really on your side, maybe in the future, in the past.

speaker-0: Exactly.

speaker-1: Cool. Yeah, so this was really interesting. So to get some more insights, yeah, so which is the subtitle of the podcast, Get the Insights. Yeah, so you bring us the insights today from the Olympics. Very, very interesting and thrilling. Maybe then we have to talk about a little bit more in detail next time. But for the moment, I wish you all the best. not saying that in in of sports or water polo. So first of all, for end of May. So mid or end of May. So who knows? For the birth of your little girl. So all the best for this big achievement. coming up, very, let's say, interesting and thrilling days and weeks for you. Really, really looking forward to this, what you say, maybe after the first days and weeks.

speaker-0: the

speaker-1: And also on the other side for sure also for your end of season in Spain and for the next games with the US team and yeah thanks for your time today so thank you. You have to leave for the practice today so have fun and all the greetings to Finn also from Germany from the home hood.

speaker-0: Yes, of course.

speaker-1: Talk to you soon and thanks for time today.

speaker-0: Thank you so much. Have a good one.

speaker-1: Thank you.