Sports
USA Water Polo Goalkeeper Ashleigh Johnson Finds Joy in Her Trailblazing Journey
PARIS — These Olympics may very well be described because the Games of ladies’s empowerment, especially the empowerment of black women. There’s the historic dominance of the U.S. women’s basketball team, the seismic impact of gymnast Simone Biles and sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson’s quest to win the gold medal she felt was denied her in 2020.
Then there’s Ashleigh Johnson, a two-time Olympic champion who is taken into account top-of-the-line goalkeepers in women’s water polo — In 2021, she saved 80 shots on the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics, greater than another goalkeeper in either the lads’s or women’s tournamentsJohnson is a pillar of the dominant U.S. women’s Olympic water polo team, which is searching for its fourth consecutive Olympic gold medal.
Johnson helped lead Team USA to gold on the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and the delayed 2020 Tokyo Games. Her team opened its title defense Saturday with a dominant 15-6 victory over Greece. Johnson recorded 10 saves in three or more quarters. Team USA lost 13-11 to Spain in pool play on Monday.
Johnson, who played water polo for 4 years at Princeton, made her first Olympic team at age 21. Now, at 29, Johnson has grow to be a sage, a keeper of the flame, and has warned the Olympic team that it must write its own history.
“The legacy of this team is so strong — the U.S. women’s water polo team has won three consecutive gold medals, and this is an opportunity to win a fourth,” she said. “But this particular team, this group of women, hasn’t done anything yet. We haven’t won a gold medal, we haven’t been to the Olympics. This is our first opportunity to prove ourselves. We’re making our own way and writing our own stories.”
That’s how Johnson described her journey, from swimming lessons to winning three consecutive Florida state championships at Miami High School to playing intercollegiate water polo at an Ivy League school to becoming a dominant force in a sport where there have been no black players.
Tom Pennington/Getty Images
In 2016, Johnson became the primary African-American woman to affix the U.S. Olympic women’s water polo team. For all of the talk of progress and the misguided backlash against diversity, Johnson is proof of the effectiveness of diversity and the ability of inclusivity.
Just ask the opposition. Johnson played 4 years at Princeton and have become the all-time saves leader. Johnson’s journey was a difficult and lonely learning experience that gave her a brand new perspective on what other trailblazers endured to interrupt through previously segregated sports.
The biggest challenge was an internal one, testing her self-confidence. The first was selecting a university.
“I played the sport in high school, and deciding to go to college to play water polo wasn’t easy,” she said. “I chose Princeton, which was a very unusual path for a water polo player, but I was going to play water polo there, which I did for four years.”
After her sophomore 12 months, Johnson made the difficult decision to depart college and train to make the U.S. Women’s Olympic Water Polo Team. “That decision was tough because I never saw anyone on that team that looked like me. I never imagined that I could do that. I always wanted to balance my life with my sport, and I felt like the decision to move from New Jersey to California was a huge decision to give up that balance and take it out of my life.”
She had to beat her doubts, but eventually she found the positive energy of family and friends who encouraged her to take the leap. “I thought, ‘OK, here are all these people who believe in me, who believe I can do this. Let me take a chance and believe I can do it, believe in myself and just do it.’ So I did. I worked hard for two years and eventually made my first Olympic team.”
In some ways, Johnson’s journey defines the journey of any athlete who makes the Olympic team in any sport. She was stretched and pushed in ways she could never have imagined. Even the isolation of being a trailblazer became empowering.
“We trained twice a day, lifted weights four times a week. It was a lot more than I’ve ever done,” Johnson said. “I’m glad I took the risk, but it was weird.”
As an East Coast transplant to the West Coast, Johnson was a fish out of water. “Water polo is West Coast-based, so coming from the East Coast and taking what I knew about water polo, how I played, to the national team was a very difficult transition. And then, being the only person who looked like me, I thought, ‘OK, how do I fit in when nobody looks like me, nobody has my background, and what do I want to take from them? What do I want to give? How open, how vulnerable am I going to be on this team?’”
What if she did all this, sacrificed herself, opened herself up, and still didn’t achieve the specified result?
Johnson discovered that letting go of fear brings freedom.
“It was a tough journey,” she said. “But I used to be ultimately capable of make the team and recover from my fear of failure, which is difficult when you’ve such an enormous goal.
“That’s something that a lot of people don’t realize about the Olympic journey. The more you hold on to the fear of not achieving your goal, the more it hurts when you don’t achieve it, and the less you actually experience the journey along the way, which is the best thing you get out of it.”
Clive Rose/2024 Getty Images
Three Olympics later, Johnson has grow to be the leader and star of Team USA. Her mission now, in addition to helping the team win its fourth consecutive gold medal, is to open the door and convey more young women who appear like her into the game.
In July, she felt invigorated when 65-year-old rapper Flavor Flav signed a five-year sponsorship deal to support the lads’s and ladies’s national water polo teams.
“I’ve met a lot of young black girls in my sport. A lot of them reach out to me through Instagram through USA Water Polo,” Johnson said. “Just sharing stories, encouraging and being a fan of people who find themselves coming into our sport, being a voice that guides them, telling them they’re on the precise path, they’re doing the precise thing, there’s a spot for you here.
“I think telling a new story is something I’m trying to do, saying we belong here, we stand out here, and then mentoring. That’s really important to me.”
When she was 21 and walking the trail of a pioneer alone, Johnson struggled hard to seek out joy in her journey. Today, she said, her joy is immense.
“I think finding joy in what you do is asking yourself why you do it,” she said. “I play because it brings me joy even when it’s hard. Like, jumping in a pool is one of the hardest things I do all day, but I think about it as my job, I get to play a game with my friends, and it’s the same game I’ve been playing since I was a kid. The game hasn’t changed, I’ve just gotten better at it, so I play the game I’m really good at with my friends every day.”
There is more joy at these Games than on the Tokyo Games, when the world was in the grips of a pandemic.
Johnson said 2021 lacked a way of lightness and joy.
“One of the biggest differences between the Tokyo Olympics and these games is that the pandemic is behind us, and that has affected a lot of athletes,” she said. “Loads of people have been grieving, lots of people have been wondering how one can take care of the financial losses, the social losses, and a lot distance.
“We didn’t have any interaction with other athletes (in Tokyo). The Olympic spirit was there, but it was muted. So going into these Games, that Olympic spirit was revived. As excited as I am to play, people are excited to go and be part of the Olympic spirit. We all felt a surge of energy.”
Winning a fourth gold medal will bring her joy, but it would also make her discipline more diverse, and the outcomes her team achieves will give her peace of mind.
Joy has grow to be multifaceted.
“The pandemic has put things in perspective for us,” Johnson said. “OK, I play water polo and I’m an athlete, but what else am I? — understanding that you’re more than just an athlete, more than what you do at your job. I need to go for a walk every day, or I like to cook, I like to read. Connecting with things that make you happy.”
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Breanna Stewart will start the ninth season of WNBA in a few days. New York Liberty All-Star and WNBA master are long enough to watch her peers fight for visibility. Over the years, she saw only a slight increase in players’ salaries amongst WNBA Meteoric growth in popularity.
Stewart was part of the negotiations on two collective agreements as a member of the WNBA players’ union. The third round of negotiations continues, perhaps the most vital in Stewart’s profession. Until the end, he hopes that players’ salaries will increase to unprecedented numbers.
“It was gradually approaching,” said Stewart. “But I hope that with the upcoming new television offer, it will really increase to your own category.”
WNBA players were to count on it once they he gave up current CBA two years before its expiry. WNBA brings extra money than ever from sponsors and ticket sales and can bring way more 11-year media rights agreementprice about $ 200 million a 12 months from 2026.
Along with the prolonged range of progress, WNBA appeared in several areas: more teams are added to the league, which suggests more places in the letters. Full -time Charter flights They were added last season after years of lobbying for higher travels.
But as league players they’re searching for a larger participation on this development. WNBA players currently earn only a small fraction of participation in the league revenues.
Player wages have long been a matter of disputes between the NBA – which owns about 60% of WNBA and conducts CBA negotiations – and ladies’s basketball. This is one of the biggest financial obstacles with which the league still stands, and players said that they’re ready to sit matches if the negotiations don’t lead to the structure of remuneration, which they think are fair.
“Talent is there, the product is there,” said Arike Ogunbowale Dallas Wings. “Now we have to compensate for this.”
The current WNBA CBA, which was signed before the 2020 season, increased the maximum salaries for the stars from USD 117,500 in 2019 to USD 215,000 in 2020.
But it was long before the last popularity of the league before stars like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese He brought a record number of fans.
“The league has only increased from” 2020, said Risa Isard, assistant to the sport management professor in Uconn. “And so there is a chance for players to regain the whole value they have produced in the last five years, which they have not seen so directly.”
What WNBA players receive remuneration compared to NBA players
Paige BuckersNo. 1 Last month WNBA Draft, signed a debutant’s contract, which shall be price just over $ 78,000, which is around what Clark received as number one 12 months ago. They will do way more in marketing offers and performance bonuses.
Both are considered generational talents. Both are considered players changing franchise. Both earn much lower than most players in other leagues who were equally excited to change the trajectory of their teams.
This applies to recognized stars reminiscent of Stewart and MVP 3 times A’ja Wilsontoo. Players of their caliber can earn around USD 240,000.
The minimum salary for NBA players is $ 1 157 153. Victor Wembanyama, the San Antonio Spurs Center Supergowary submitted to 1 in 2023, earned $ 12.2 million as part of his debutants’ contract in the amount of $ 55 million.
The NBA numbers are partly higher due to the huge difference in the margins of the profits of each leagues. Last season, the NBA generated about $ 11 billion in revenues. WNBA doesn’t publicly publish its revenues, although Bloomberg announced that the league earned about $ 200 million in 2023.
WNBA players’ salaries are also much lower than what NBA paid to their players, when about $ 30 million – $ 200 million today, when inflation was corrected – in the early Seventies, said David Berri, a professor of economics at the Utah Southern University. He said that the best players earned around $ 300,000, which today will amount to about $ 2 million.
“They pay women today so much, very little in relation to what they paid to men 50 years ago,” added Berri, “and explain this for me (IS) Of course you treat women differently than men.”
How many wnba players may increase
How many pay increases shall be the players, it should just be seen. Berri said that fifty% share of $ 200 million of profits shall be equal to the player’s average salary of not less than $ 1 million, and the maximum salary increased in anywhere from $ 3 million to $ 5 million.
He added that it is simpler to say than to do.
“Will the NBA recognize how few they paid for?” Berri said: “And suddenly go out with the contract and say,” Oh, will we pay $ 5 million now? “
No WNBA player has ever earned nearly $ 1 million, but Stewart said that achieving this number could possibly be a very important precedent.
“There are players in this league who are valued at over $ 1 million,” said Stewart. “This is just the reality of what it is. But for everyone, seeing this number and realizing it, ok – now at this moment the league will probably be 30 years – and look what we have done.”
Pros and downsides of WNBA players sitting in games
CBA negotiations have never led to the sitting of WNBA players, and plenty of hope that it should not occur.
Although the WNBA, which is just 29 years old, has experienced a financial boom, continues to be very small in terms of revenues compared to the NBA, which has been around for 80 years. This signifies that WNBA player lever is proscribed in the event that they resolve to sit in games, said Berri.
“Because if you leave work and do not appear, the owners, NBA owners are like this, it doesn’t really cost me a lot of money,” he added.
Berri pointed to the US national football team Fight for equal salary As a plan of potential success. Many of these players continuously drew attention to the difference in sex salaries in football through the media and their very own web accounts. This led to an American house, transferring an invoice for equal salary in 2022, and Berri expects WNBA players to use similar methods.
If players resolve to sit, Isard, Professor Uconn, said that this could not be a surprise, considering their history of getting up the reasons they imagine.
“They are often really selfless in what these causes are,” said Isard. “And they’re searching for everyone and all others and the community, and what is going on in the Senate race and about what is going on in reproductive justice and what is going on in the recipes for weapons – so some ways that they stand a lot population on this country.
“And I think that when I hear them say,” We would consider: “What I hear,” says, “Why shouldn’t we stand behind us? So let’s be for everyone. So we too.”
(Tagstranslate) gender pay gap
Earvin “Magic” basketball legend Johnson obliged in the amount of $ 500,000 at Louisiana Xavier University helped the school to lift over $ 2 million in his own Gala of the century May 9.
Johnson’s donation for the one centesimal anniversary of the university was transferred to the president of the retired President Dr. Norman C. Francis.
Money collected at the event will support student scholarships.
“A sign of a great man and who appears,” said Johnson at the gala. “Because the man you are, all the wonderful things you did in your star career. And all the people you have helped. You were successful thanks to your great leadership in Xavier … in honor of Dam Xavier $ 500,000.”
Bill Bellama (former MTV VJ) was the host of the ceremony. Jeffrey Osborne, The R&B Legend and former vocalist Ltd.
Francis, a graduate of the University of Xavier, was the president of the school for 47 years, almost half of his existence. He was answerable for sending many black students to a medical school. Under his leadership, students’ records were tripled.
“Our gala of the century was a beautiful success,” said Phillip D. Adams, vp of KSVIERA for institutional progress. “Not only did it honor Xavier five times, but we collected over $ 2 million to secure the future of distinguished students who select Xavier education. In just 100 years Xavier collected various recognition, strengthening as a pacesetter. I’m honored that we were in a position to consistently raise the crucial scholarship funds, and I am unable to wait for what years.
The only historically black and Catholic University of the country, Xavier, occupies the highest number of HBCU throughout the country and recognized as a national leader in the field of STEM and health sciences.
(Tagstranslate) Dr. Norman C. Francis (T) Magic Johnson (T) Xavier University
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