Water Polo: Gilchrist’s future plans liquid

Water polo and surfing both tend to favor the aggressive athlete. Treading lightly isn’t exactly advisable, but that’s what Kaleigh Gilchrist tried to do in one situation during her freshman year at USC.

Gilchrist grew up starring in both sports before graduating from Newport Harbor High in 2010. Then, that October, she asked USC women’s water polo coach Jovan Vavic if she could miss a week of water polo training to compete at the ISA Surfing World Championships in Peru.

The response from the fiery Vavic, whose men’s and women’s water polo teams have won a combined 14 NCAA championships at USC, was not what Gilchrist was hoping for.

“I didn’t really know how Jovan worked,” Gilchrist said. “He just kind of snapped on me. He said, ‘It’s either water polo or surfing, it’s up to you, you decide.’ I wanted to quit [water polo] that whole year, but I stuck with it and kind of fell in love with it again. But even sophomore and junior year, when I got asked to go on [surfing] trips, it was still in the back of my mind. Am I doing the right thing? Do I want to play water polo?”

Gilchrist stuck with it and the move obviously paid off. She has won at every level. A four-year starter at Newport Harbor, she helped the Sailors capture the CIF Southern Section Division 1 crown in 2008 as a sophomore. In 2013, she was a junior co-captain on the USC team that claimed the program’s fifth NCAA title.

And, now 24, Gilchrist is competing for Team USA in her first Olympic Games. The 5-foot-9 attacker had two goals and two field blocks Thursday as the U.S. beat China, 12-4, to improve to 2-0 in Group B play.

Team USA, the defending Olympic champion and reigning FINA world champion, concludes group play Saturday at 9 a.m. PDT against Hungary. The Americans are gold-medal favorites.

So Gilchrist is all water polo, all the time, right? Maybe for now. Yet, she also knows that just last week, the International Olympic Committee approved surfing as an Olympic sport in 2020.

Will Gilchrist be catching waves in Tokyo? She seems to be headed in that direction. In October, she’s entered into a World Surf League event in Japan.

“The plan is to do contests and try to get back on tour, get my points up there and do as many as I can,” said Gilchrist, who won the National Scholastic Surfing Assn. college women’s championship in June 2013, a month after leading USC to the water polo title.

Gilchrist is keeping her options open. She has become a reliable option for the U.S. water polo team ever since she started training with the club in 2013.

Even that was dicey. U.S. Coach Adam Krikorian invited her to train with the team in the summer of 2013, but Gilchrist already had surfing contests booked.

“I actually emailed Adam and told him I couldn’t commit to the whole summer,” she said. “I was just like, ‘I hope you can understand and you can invite me back in fall.’ I was willing to kind of give up that dream. I didn’t know how he was going to react to that email. Luckily, he invited me back. When I got the invite back for the fall of 2013, I knew I had to commit completely to be able to make this dream come true. That second chance kind of made me realize that it was all worth it.”

Krikorian appreciates the sacrifice that Gilchrist made, giving up essentially three prime surfing years.

“She went for it, and I think that gets lost,” he said. “I see it because I’m in it, and I see people come and go all the time. The ones that make it at the end, people might not like to hear this, but they’re not always the most talented players or the best players. They’re the ones certainly with talent, but they’re able to persevere through the tough times and continue to have that goal and dream in mind. They should be commended for that more than anything. For Kaleigh to give up her first love and her first passion to chase this dream, it took some guts.”

Gilchrist has shown what she can accomplish when she puts her mind to something. None of it is surprising to Bill Barnett, Gilchrist’s high school coach at Newport Harbor who retired last year. Gilchrist is the first Sailors girls’ water polo alumna to make the Olympics, though three male athletes Barnett coached at Harbor (Eric Lindroth in 1972, Kevin Robertson in 1984 and 1988 and James Bergeson in 1988) also represented Team USA.

Barnett knew from the beginning that Gilchrist had talent. For one, just look at her family tree. Her father, Sandy, was an Olympic swimmer for Canada in 1964 and ’68. Her uncle Allen and aunt Lenora also swam for Canada in two Olympics.

But then again, just to watch Kaleigh Gilchrist in either water polo or swimming is to see her athletic ability. She and Kate Klippert, who went on to swim at Cal, both made varsity as Newport Harbor freshmen, a rarity in Barnett’s tenure.

“I knew [Gilchrist] was going to be really good right away, because I had watched her play when she was in the seventh and eighth grade,” Barnett said. “And then of course, I’d seen her surf. I’m glad she chose water polo, because there was a time when she was a freshman that she didn’t know what she was going to do. I knew she loved surfing, so I’m sure it was very hard for her at times to make choices between the two.”

On the journey, Gilchrist has even made new friends. Team USA captain Maggie Steffens, one of four returners who won gold in London, wasn’t exactly Gilchrist’s buddy when Steffens played for Stanford. But the two hit it off when they were roommates during Gilchrist’s first national team travel trip to China in 2014.

For more than a year, they’ve been housemates, with Steffens living in a studio underneath the Gilchrist family home.

“It’s pretty incredible to wake up every morning in Newport, and obviously I have an incredible host in Kaleigh,” Steffens said. “She’s like the mayor of Newport, I feel like. Everyone knows her, and she knows all the great spots. She’ll go out surfing, and I’ll go for a little beach walk.

“I still haven’t ventured into that [surfing] world,” Steffens added. “That’s her thing.”

Well, for now, her thing is water polo. After that, who knows? Just know that Gilchrist’s story isn’t over by any stretch, as she posted on Facebook last week after surfing was announced as an Olympic sport in 2020.

“Looks like I have a new Olympic Dream,” Gilchrist wrote. “But first we have some business to take care of for polo!”