Brenda Villa (born April 18, 1980) is an accomplished American

water polo Water polo is a competitive team sport played in water between two teams of seven players each. The game consists of four quarters in which the teams attempt to score goals by throwing the ball into the opposing team's goal. The team with th ...

player. She is the most decorated athlete in the world of women’s water polo. Villa was named Female Water Polo Player of the Decade for 2000-2009 by the FINA Aquatics World Magazine. She is one of four female players who competed in water polo at four Olympics; and one of two female athletes who won four Olympic medals in water polo. She is a leading goalscorer in Olympic water polo history, with 31 goals. In 2018, she was inducted into the

International Swimming Hall of Fame The International Swimming Hall of Fame and Museum (ISHOF) is a history museum and hall of fame, located at One Hall of Fame Drive, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States, operated by private interests and serving as the central point for the stu ...

and the

USA Water Polo Hall of Fame The USA Water Polo Hall of Fame, located in Irvine, California, is a hall of fame dedicated to honoring players, coaches and officials who have contributed greatly to the game of water polo in the United States of America. It was established in 1976 ...

Career

Villa started swimming with a club team
Commerce Aquatics
at the age of six, and followed her brother into water polo at eight years old. She made the girls Junior Olympic Team while in high school. At

Bell Gardens High School Bell Gardens High School is a public high school in Bell Gardens, California, part of the Montebello Unified School District. History The campus was built in the 1930s and 1940s. After years of development and construction, BGHS's new three story ...

, Villa played with the boys' water polo team because her school did not have a girls' team, and went on to become a 4-time 1st team All-League, 4-time 1st team All-C.I.F. and 4-time All-American. Villa came to Stanford in 1998 as the program’s most heralded recruit.

Redshirt Redshirt, Red Shirt, or Redshirts may refer to: Entertainment * ''Red Shirts'' (film), a 1952 film about Anita Garibaldi by Franco Rossi * Redshirt (stock character), originally derived from ''Star Trek'', a stock character who dies soon after b ...

ed in 1999 and 2000 to train for the Olympics, she scored 69 goals her freshman year (2001) and was named the NCAA Women’s Water Polo Player of the Year. In the three seasons Villa played for

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

, she scored 172 goals. In 2002, she led her Stanford team with 60 goals to win the

NCAA Women's Water Polo Championship The NCAA Women's Water Polo Championship has existed since the 2001 season. Seven conferences have teams competing in women's water polo: the Big West Conference, the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA), the single-sport Golden Coast Conferen ...

; they had finished second the previous season, the first year the competition was held. Villa was awarded the 2002

Peter J. Cutino Award The Peter J. Cutino Award, named after former college water polo player and UC Berkeley coach Peter J. Cutino, is considered the most prestigious individual award in American collegiate water polo. It is given annually to the top male and female pl ...

as the top female college water polo player in the United States.

Olympics and international

Villa has been on Team USA since 1998. Although the shortest player on the US national women's water polo team at 5'4", Villa has been a prolific scorer at the international level. She scored 10 goals for Team USA at the 2003

Pan American Games The Pan American Games (also known colloquially as the Pan Am Games) is a continental multi-sport event in the Americas featuring summer sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The competition is hel ...

, which qualified the team for the

2004 Summer Olympics The 2004 Summer Olympics ( el, Θερινοί Ολυμπιακοί Αγώνες 2004, ), officially the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad ( el, Αγώνες της 28ης Ολυμπιάδας, ) and also known as Athens 2004 ( el, Αθήνα 2004), ...

. As a 20-year-old, she led the US team with nine goals at the

Sydney Olympics The 2000 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XXVII Olympiad and also known as Sydney 2000 ( Dharug: ''Gadigal 2000''), the Millennium Olympic Games or the Games of the New Millennium, was an international multi-sport event held from ...

, where the Americans took the

silver medal A silver medal in sports and other similar areas involving competition is a medal made of, or plated with, silver awarded to the second-place finisher, or runner-up, of contests or competitions such as the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, et ...

. She had a team-high 13 goals to lead the US to gold at the 2003 FINA Water Polo World Championship. In June 2004, Villa scored the first goal in

overtime Overtime is the amount of time someone works beyond normal working hours. The term is also used for the pay received for this time. Normal hours may be determined in several ways: *by custom (what is considered healthy or reasonable by society) ...

, her third of the game, and another in a

penalty shootout The penalty shootout is a method of determining a winner in sports matches that would have otherwise been drawn or tied. The rules for penalty shootouts vary between sports and even different competitions; however, the usual form is similar to pe ...

, to propel the US team past Hungary and win the gold medal at the Women's Water Polo World League Super Finals. She was the US women's team top scorer with 7 goals in 5 games at the

2004 Athens Olympics The 2004 Summer Olympics ( el, Θερινοί Ολυμπιακοί Αγώνες 2004, ), officially the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad ( el, Αγώνες της 28ης Ολυμπιάδας, ) and also known as Athens 2004 ( el, Αθήνα 2004), ...

, earning a bronze medal. Villa was team captain of the 2005 US national team coached by two-time Olympian

Heather Moody Heather Moody (born August 21, 1973 in Rexburg, Idaho) is an American water polo player, who won a silver medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics. She was team captain of the US Women's National Team that captured the bronze medal at the 2004 ...

, winning a silver medal at the FINA World Championship in Montreal. In 2005, Villa became assistant coach of the women's water polo team at

Cerritos College Cerritos College is a public community college in Norwalk, California. It offers degrees and certificates in 87 areas of study in nine divisions. History The college was founded in 1955. It was named after Rancho Los Cerritos, a local ra ...

Norwalk, California Norwalk is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The population was 105,549 at the 2010 census and an estimated 103,949 in 2019. It is the 58th most densely-populated city in California. Founded in the late 19th century, Nor ...

. The Falcons ended the season with a 21-11 record, a new school record for most wins in a season. She spent five years with the Falcons and helped them to a combined 145-26 record from 2005–09, which included the team winning their only CCCAA State Championship in school history (2008). She is now playing professionally for the Italian power team Geymonat Orizzonte in Catania, Sicily, which won the

LEN Women's Champions' Cup The LEN Champions League Women, formerly known as LEN European Cup (from 1987 to 1999), LEN Champions Cup (from 1999 to 2013) and LEN Euroleague Women (2014 to 2022), is the premier competition for women's water polo clubs of Europe and takes pla ...

in 2005 and 2006. In March 2007 Villa led the USA women's national water polo team in Melbourne, Australia, at the 2007 FINA World Water Polo Championships. Villa scored a total of 11 goals throughout the whole tournament helping team USA achieve first place naming them the 2007 FINA World Champions. At the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, she and the American team lost 8-9 in the championship game to the Netherlands and took home the silver medal. In June 2009, Villa was named to the USA water polo women's senior national team for the

2009 FINA World Championships The 2009 World Aquatics Championships ( it, Campionati mondiali di nuoto 2009) or the XIII FINA World Championships were held in Rome, Italy from 18 July to 2 August 2009. The 2009 Championships featured competition in all 5 aquatics discipline ...

. In 2010, she became the head coach at Castilleja High School for girls' water polo in

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

. At the 2012 London Summer Olympics, she and the American team won 8-5 in the championship game to Spain and took home the

gold medal A gold medal is a medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture. Since the eighteenth century, gold medals have be ...

, the Americans' first in 4 Olympics water polo competitions.

Personal

*Villa's parents immigrated to the United States from Mexico and she speaks fluent Spanish. *A three-time All-American at Stanford, Villa graduated in 2003 with a degree in political science. *Along with some of her teammates from the 2000 Olympic Team, Villa has a small tattoo of the Olympic rings, located on top of her right foot.

International competitions

*1995 FINA Junior World Championships, Sainte-Foy, Canada, 3rd place *1997 FINA Junior World Championships, Prague, Czech Republic, 3rd place *1998 FINA World Championships, Perth, Australia, 8th place *1998 Holiday Cup, Los Alamitos, CA, 2nd place *1999 Holiday Cup, Los Alamitos, CA, 3rd place *2000 Summer Olympics, Sydney, Australia, 2nd place *2001 Holiday Cup, Los Alamitos, CA, 1st place *2001 FINA World Championships, Fukuoka, Japan, 4th place *2002 Holiday Cup, Palo Alto, CA, 1st place *2002 FINA World Cup, Perth, Australia, 2nd place *2003 FINA World Championships, Barcelona, Spain, 1st place *2003 Pan American Games, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 1st place *2003 Holiday Cup, Los Alamitos, CA, 1st place *2004 FINA World League, Long Beach, USA, 1st place *2004 Holiday Cup, La Jolla, CA, 1st place *2004 Summer Olympics, Athens, Greece, 3rd place *2005 FINA World League, Kirishi, Russia, 5th place *2005 FINA World Championships, Montreal, Canada, 2nd place *2006 FINA World League, Cosenza, Italy, 1st place *2006 FINA World Cup, Tianjin, China, 4th place *2006 Holiday Cup, Los Alamitos, CA, 1st place *2007 FINA World Championships, Melbourne, Australia, 1st place *2007 FINA World League, Montreal, Canada, 1st place *2007 Holiday Cup, Long Beach, CA, 3rd place *2007 Pan American Games, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1st place *2008 FINA World League, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain, 2nd place *2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing, China, 2nd place *2009 FINA World League, Kirishi, Russia, 1st place *2009 FINA World Championships, Rome, Italy, 1st place *2009 Holiday Cup, Newport Beach, CA, 2nd place *2010 FINA World League, La Jolla, USA, 1st place *2010 FINA World Cup, Christchurch, New Zealand, 1st *2011 FINA World League, Tianjin, China, 1st place *2011 FINA World Championships, Shanghai, China, 6th place *2011 Pan American Games, Guadalajara, Mexico, 1st place *2012 FINA World League, Changsu, China, 1st place *2012 Summer Olympics, London, United Kingdom, 1st place

References

External links