Makenzie and
Aria Fischer are no strangers to success as both won Olympic Gold medals as teenagers at the 2016 Games in Rio along with multiple FINA World Championships and World Cups. Now five years later they have a chance to go back to the Olympics this summer in Tokyo and take another walk to the top of the podium.
That path to greatness began at a young age. The Fischer sisters come from a strong water polo family as their dad Erich was on the Men's National Team that won the 1991 FINA World Cup and placed fourth at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Yet they weren't pushed to play water polo. In fact, like most young kids they played a variety of sports, including swimming, basketball, and soccer. In fact, Aria recalls that water polo was a reward of sorts they got to try later: "Once we got a certain time on the 100, he let us play water polo, so it's kind of like the treat that we got to do once we were good enough." Makenzie began playing at the age of 10 and Aria at the age of 9, and they've played mostly together ever since.
They both began their careers for Laguna Beach Water Polo club where their dad coached them alongside another team parent. They played for Laguna Beach until the age of 14 when they moved on to play for Saddleback El Toro (SET) which offered older age groups. Being coached by their father was a fun and different experience for Makenzie: "Anyone who knows my dad knows he's pretty intense, so we were very fortunate to get a very solid base for water polo from him. I think all the girls coached by him feel the same way. He was definitely the toughest on me and Aria. It was really fun, and we learned a ton, but at times we were a little bit scared—at least in certain moments. I was thinking, 'Oh, I really messed up. I wonder what my dad's going to think,' but we were really lucky he coached us."
On top of coaching them, the elder Fischer also taught them the importance of making their best effort until the end, as he was part of the 1992 Men's Team that came up short of a medal after winning the FINA World Cup the year before. "I think the biggest lesson that he imparted on us was just make sure you finish strong, make sure you give it your all at the Games so there are no regrets afterward. That's something Aria and I have internalized. Just seeing his experiences and having that bitter taste in his mouth, even many years later, was something we didn't want to feel."
From an early age, the Fischer sisters were hooked on the sport and aimed to play in college and eventually in the Olympics as Makenzie adds: "I always wanted to play sports in college and in the Olympics. Our dad was an Olympian, so we saw what it meant to him before we understood what it was. We knew it was something really cool, really special, and really unique." Aria also saw herself as the younger sister who wanted to be like her dad and her older sister, so it was no surprise when she followed suit: "I got a lot of motivation from seeing Makenzie grow up and starting to have success—just chasing her, wanting to be as good as her, and trying to be better than her."
On top of playing club, the Fischer sisters also played varsity water polo all four years at Laguna Beach High School. When Makenzie first got there, the program was small and growing. Aria would join two years later and get thrown into her first major tournament as a freshman. Both would become part of the early group of players—including 2012 Olympic Gold Medalist Annika Dries—who helped establish Laguna Beach as a powerhouse in water polo. Makenzie had a great time there and gives credit to coach Ethan Damato for helping her career: "Laguna was great. Ethan was good at fostering a sense of community with the girls on the team. He made it really special in that way. He was good at pushing us but also having fun. It was a really warm community, but I think the thing I remember most was just how tight our team was. I don't think I've played on another team where everyone was literally best friends. Also, we were able to grow as a program that's dominant now and consistently does well. It's really cool to see how that growth has come about."
As holder of the Laguna Beach scoring record, Makenzie helped lead Laguna to the CIF playoffs in her freshman year. The team lost in the quarterfinals, but that was just the start of a great career. When Aria joined the team, Laguna made it to the finals and won for the first time, which stood out as one of Aria's favorite moments: "It was cool. There's just something really special about high school water polo. That first season when I was a freshman it was really cool to be able to play with Makenzie. We were starting to get better and better and building off that recent success—and to do it with my sister was incredible."
As the sisters started playing high school water polo, they also had taken their first steps in the National Team pipeline as both joined the Olympic Development program. The progression was fast for both of them. First Makenzie advanced from Cadet upward and through all the stages. Those early years included her first international trip competing at the UANA Pan American Championships which was a great experience: "That was kind of my first taste at traveling and playing water polo, and it was such a fun trip with such fun girls. I just remember loving every second of it and was like, 'This is what I want to do, this is so fun!'" From there she worked her way through the youth team, winning the FINA Junior and Youth World Championships before being invited to train with the Senior National Team: "I was invited to the Holiday Cup, so that was my first tournament with the team. There were a lot of girls there, so it wasn't really like I made the roster at that point. But I got to train with them in the summer, and I just remember being really stoked and also really nervous as I still looked up to a lot of the players. It was a pretty abrupt change for me; something I wasn't expecting, so it was a really cool experience for me."
Aria's path through the National Team pipeline followed a similar pattern as she also appeared at a UANA Pan American Championships before going on to win a FINA Junior and Youth World Championship. From there she was invited by coach
Adam Krikorian to join the squad for National Team training as an extra player: "I would go to more of the summer national team stuff just as a training player. Like Makenzie, my progression was kind of quick, and I ended up taking my junior year of high school online to train for the Olympics, and no one really thought I was going to make it but me."
Both sisters got to reach that Olympic dream together when they were named to the 2016 Rio Olympics roster. The process of finding out consisted of each player meeting with Krikorian—and was done in age order, so Makenzie was first: "I just remember being super nervous. When I was called in, I remember sitting in the room being so stressed and not saying anything, and Adam was just smiling at me, and I was like, 'This is so weird; I don't know what's going on.' Then he told me I made the team, and I was so excited but nervous for Aria who was up after me."
Aria was next, and she knew she was going to the Olympics one way or another—either as a spectator or a player.
"I knew that I would be there to support Makenzie no matter what, and I was super nervous because I hadn't really done much up until that point," Aria recalls. "I wasn't at the World Championships the summer before. I really started making teams a few months before the Olympics, so I was a pretty new member, and I was very nervous. Then Adam told me I made it, and it was just a rush of emotion, just everything kind of came over me at once, and it was super exciting. I ran out to tell Makenzie and then called my parents, and it was a good feeling—especially making the team with her."
Growing up both sisters looked up to members of the Women's National Team, including
Maggie Steffens and Laguna Beach alum Annika Dries. Aria especially looked up to Annika because she was a center: "She's kind of that hometown hero I looked up to, and then on the current team Maggie as well as others from the 2012 team. I had a sweatshirt signed before 2012, and it has Maggie's signature on it, Courtney's (Mathewson) signature, Brenda's (Villa) signature, Annika's (Dries) and everyone from that team. I still have the sweatshirt somewhere, which is pretty cool because we were pretty young when we started with national teams." Makenzie also admired Maggie and Annika: "Maggie was always someone I looked up to because she was so young on that first team and just dominated at the 2012 Olympics. I remember watching those games and thinking that there's the smallest chance that I can follow in her footsteps. Also, Annika Dries is a player I've always looked up to being a Laguna Beach hometown hero in 2012. I remember going to her restaurant and watching the 2012 Olympic Gold medal game, and we were all so excited. Aria and I would get private lessons from her sometimes when we were little, and then being on the same team with her those first couple of summers when she was still playing was really special."
Makenzie and Aria would be two of the youngest Team USA athletes at the 2016 Games with Aria becoming the youngest U.S. female team sport athlete to win Gold at a Summer Olympics. Still, that first Olympic experience wasn't as scary as Aria thought it would be: "The biggest thing I remember was that I was a lot less nervous than I thought I would be. I thought I would be freaking out. I thought I'd be having to calm myself down. I just remember feeling very prepared. I remember feeling that we had worked to put ourselves in this position, and I remember at the end of the day thinking, 'This is just another water polo game. This is something I've done every single year of my life since I was nine."
Just like Aria, Makenzie didn't feel much pressure, either, as she wound up scoring in her first Olympic game: "You're always a little bit nervous before a water polo game, but once we jumped into the water and the whistle blew, we started playing, and there really weren't that many nerves that you would kind of expect to have in this biggest moment of your water polo career. I think it was a testament to how well Adam prepared us."
The 2016 Games saw the women putting up one of the best performances in Olympic history as they went undefeated while outscoring opponents 73-32 on the way to an historic second consecutive Gold medal with a 12-5 victory over Italy. Makenzie scored seven goals during the tournament after putting up a team high 24 in the Olympic qualification tournament. And winning Gold with Aria was an amazing experience for her: "It's incredible in itself to win a Gold medal, and to win it with my sister standing next to me was also super special, and I think that's been one of the most special things about this journey—not just the Olympics, but having someone who's so close to you, who's going through the exact same things as you, makes it so much easier. It can be hard to relate to or explain exactly what you're going through to people who haven't been through the process. But it's a lot easier to make light of the situation when things are really hard just because Aria knows exactly what I'm going through."
It was also a dream come true for Aria as she echoes similar sentiments: "It was pretty amazing winning a Gold medal, and it's something we dreamed of since we were little kids—and first found out what an Olympian was through our dad. But winning it with someone you've grown up with, someone you played water polo with since you were little, someone you really care about, it's just like tenfold that experience. So it's definitely one of my fondest memories, and I get excited thinking about it."
With an Olympic Gold medal under her belt, Makenzie headed off to play college water polo at Stanford—not because her parents went there, but because she felt it was the perfect combination of athletics and academics: "I loved the school and the feel of it. The academics are incredible, obviously. I really liked the girls and the coaching staff on the water polo team, so it seemed like the right fit regardless of where our parents went. But now that we all went to Stanford, it's fun to compare experiences and hear stories about a place that we're really familiar with and love, so that's been pretty special." Makenzie had a great freshman season as she scored 54 goals and helped lead Stanford to the 2017 NCAA Championship alongside National Team teammates
Maggie Steffens,
Jamie Neushul, Jordan Raney, and Gabby Stone. But her favorite college water polo moment occurred during her junior year, when Stanford won the NCAA title again in 2019: "Because it was the last time weplayed. For whatever reason that game and that team was super special. I don't think I've ever played in front of a home crowd like that before with so many people I know in the stands and how excited they were and how into it they were. The competitiveness and how close the game was made it super special."
Aria joined Stanford one year after Makenzie and also recalls that winning moment as the most special so far in her career: "There's just something about playing a very important game in your home pool in front of your friends and family and community and winning. I came in my freshman year, and we lost the NCAAs to USC
atUSC, and that was a really tough experience. But then we came back the next year and won. We had gone back and forth with USC all season and we ended up playing against them in the final game at Stanford, and I had learned a lot from the previousyear's mistakes and improved—and we won it that year."
The Team USA women have headed off to the Olympics now but over the last two months they were in Southern California playing games against Canada, Hungary, Russia and the FINA World League Super Final in Greece. Normally the team would have played games earlier in the year, but that didn't happen due to COVID-19—so Makenzie and the team needed to adjust.
"I think this year is super unique in that normally we're competing against teams all the time, and this year there's not that competition," she notes. "We've only been playing ourselves for the last year, so I think there's a little bit of anxiety not playing other teams. When you play games, you know exactly where you stand, and it's really hard to tell how you're doing individually and how you're doing against a team when you're not competing."
Aria believes that despite the changes, the team has gained more creativity and has become more adaptable: "We're not able to travel and play other people, so we're really looking internally at what can we do best on defense, what can we do best on offense, what can we do best on 6-on-5s. How do we get these different aspects of our game perfect, and how do we focus on ourselves right now, because that's almost all we really can do. Also applying creative ways to scout other teams and prepare for their offenses and defenses, because we haven't seen them in over a year and don't know what they look like. Having the ability to be adaptable and go with the flow when we're used to being so scheduled and regimented is something we've been meaning to learn and grow and adapt to."
Lastly the Fischer sisters offer advice to those hoping to make the National Team in the future: "Don't be afraid to follow your goals and believe in yourself even if other people don't necessarily believe in you. It's okay to put yourself out there and take risks in order to try to follow your dreams. It's just really important to believe in yourself and know your worth and what to bring to the table to keep on chasing those goals and dreams," Aria advises. As for Makenzie, she adds, "The most crucial thing is to make sure you're still having fun and enjoying the process. When things are really tough, remember why you love playing the sport. Fall back on your teammates, make sure you enjoy spending time with them and fostering those relationships."
