The path to Paris, and the 2024 Olympic Games, is different for everybody.
For two Inland Empire water polo athletes – the second and third to ever make a USA Olympic women’s water polo squad from Riverside County – the paths were particularly different but the shared experience could help make the upcoming games even more special.
Emily Ausmus is 18, a 2023 graduate of Martin Luther King High and IE Varsity Player of the Year as a senior. She used this past academic year as a gap year to pursue her Olympic dream and join a roster of adults, and will head to USC this fall, where her brother plays on the men’s team.
Tara Prentice is 26, a two-time All-American at UC Irvine who played first at Great Oak High and then Murrieta Valley, followed by a year at UCLA before transferring to Irvine. She failed to make the roster for the pandemic-delayed 2021 Olympics in Tokyo, but the experience of competing for a spot and the motivation it provided helped get her on the squad now.
They are part of a select group of 13, the U.S. Olympic roster announced at the end of May. And the list of U.S. water polo Olympians from Riverside County is an even more select group. First came Hemet’s Coralie Simmons, who won a silver medal in 2000 in Sydney, is a member of the USA Water Polo Hall of Fame and just completed her eighth season as Cal’s women’s water polo coach.
Believe it or not, Ausmus and Prentice weren’t just thrown together by geography. Yes, they and teammate Jordan Raney share a place in Long Beach, where the Olympic team’s training base has been located. But, as Prentice noted in a phone conversation this week, she and Ausmus go further back.
“It’s funny. I used to coach at SoCal (Water Polo Club) where Emily played, and I’ve known Emily since she was like 11 or 12,” Prentice said. “I actually coached her for a game at one of her JOs (Junior Olympics) when she was playing at SoCal.
“So before we started (Olympic) training, I actually talked to her…
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