Sami Hill had a great pedigree to become a world-class goalkeeper in water polo. Her father was a football lineman at Fresno State, and her mother a basketball point guard at BYU. Blessed with size, vision, and reflexes, she anchored the teams at Dos Pueblos High and UCLA, and she earned a gold medal as the USA’s backup goalie at the Rio Olympics.
Before she decides whether to go for the 2020 Games in Tokyo, Hill is going to play for a club in Sydney, Australia, next year. “I’ll use that as a test run,” she said. In the meantime, she’s been training at the Elings Aquatic Center on the Dos Pueblos campus, and Charger boys’ water polo coach Connor Levoff recruited her to be his assistant.
“She’s tough,” said Levoff, who sometimes has Hill play goalie in practice. “She raises the level of our shooting.”