Team USA Water Polo to Play for First Gold Medal since 1988

Jeremy

Senior Writer Written on August 22, 2008

Team USA Men's water polo has made an improbable run to the gold medal game as they will play the reigning two-time Olympic gold medalist Hungary on Sunday. An earlier post talked about how team USA is an underdog for making it this far in the Olympics.

Team USA was last in the gold medal game in the 1988 Olympic games where they lost and wound up with a silver medal. This mornings semi-final was against Serbia, a team who beat team USA 4-2 in the prelims, but this time around USA won 10-5 and outscored Serbia 5-1 in the second half.

The key for team USA was the need for, team captain and three time Olympian, Tony Azevedo to score goals. Azevedo had not scored against Serbia in three Olympic matches dated back to the 2000 Sydney games. In this match-up, he scored three goals in the game and he leads team USA in goals scored.

Team USA came in ranked 9th in the world and the main goal for this team was to make it to the medal rounds, which it did by winning its group and then making it to the gold medal game. This is huge for a team that has had three coaches since 2004 and having current coach Terry Schroeder on for just over a year.

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written on August 22, 2008 Opinion