# Ashleigh Johnson

Ashleigh Elizabeth Johnson (born September 12, 1994) is an American water polo player of Ethnikos Piraeus team, who is considered by many to be the best goalkeeper in the world. She was part of the American national team that won the gold medal at the 2015 World Aquatics Championships. In 2016, she became the first African-American woman to make the US Olympic team in water polo. She was part of the gold-medal winning 2016 and 2020 U.S. women's water polo Olympic teams, and earned a spot on the 2024 U.S. women's water polo Olympic team. She is a 2017 graduate of Princeton University. She is 6'1" tall and her team nickname is "Ayay."

## Early life

Johnson's parents are Donna and Winston Johnson, both of whom were born in Jamaica.
Johnson was raised in Miami by her mother, Donna Johnson. Johnson grew up with four siblings (three brothers and one sister), all of whom play water polo.
Growing up in Miami, her mom had all her kids involved in aquatics, but had to "drag" Ashleigh to swim practice:
   Yeah, I did not like swimming. Swimming was not my thing. Swimming was kind of what you had to do, and water polo was the reward. We'd go to school - actually, elementary school - walk across the park, and then we'd go from swim practice to water polo practice. So it was just our endless cycle, day to day - school, park, swimming, water polo. And I fell in love with the sport.
Her brothers are Blake, Julius and William. Her younger sister Chelsea, is a 2 Meter player and played with Johnson at Princeton. Chelsea graduated from Princeton a year after Ashleigh in 2018 and continues to be involved with water polo in Miami.
About her decision to play goalie in water polo, Johnson shared with Princeton Alumni Weekly her goalie origins trace back to her sister Chelsea:
   I was just copying her. I wasn't choosing to go in the goal because it was anything that appealed to me in particular.

## Water polo career
### High school

Johnson was raised in Miami, Florida and attended Ransom Everglades School for high school.
At Ransom Everglades, she was a four-year letter winner and starter on her school's water polo team guiding them to three consecutive state championships. She also earned All-Dade honors throughout career,
Johnson was a multi-sport athlete and also competed in swimming in high school. She earned all-county honors twice in swimming. She was the state individual champion on the 50 Free event in her sophomore year.
As a senior, Johnson committed to play water polo at Princeton University. She graduated from high school in 2012.

### Collegiate career

In her first year she was named Third-Team All American, while earning Honorable Mention as a sophomore in 2014, and Second Team as a junior in 2015.
In 2017, Johnson graduated with a bachelor's degree from Princeton University. She majored in psychology.
Johnson finished her collegiate water polo career as Princeton’s all-time leader in saves (1,362). During her time at Princeton, she compiled a 100-17 win-loss record with a .693 save percentage. She was the first Princeton women's water polo player to be named first team All-America and she was the third ever to be selected All-America in each of her four seasons. She was a 19-time CWPA Defensive Player of the Week award winner, a four-time first-team all-conference player and the CWPA Player of the Year.

### 2016 Summer Olympics

Johnson was the first African-American woman to make the US Olympic water polo team when she made the team for the 2016 Summer Olympics. The geographical diversity Johnson brought to the team, she was the only team member not from California, was highlighted by SwimSwam before the Olympic Games. Her age, 21 years old, and her sub-Saharan African ancestry were highlighted by Sports Illustrated leading up to the 2016 Olympic Games. She helped the team win the gold medal at the Olympic Games. In doing so, she became just the second Princeton Tiger to win an Olympic gold medal, then return to compete for the university.

### Orizzonte Catania, Italy

From January 2018 she has been hired by the Orizzonte Catania, the most titled club in Europe in recent times. She lives and trains in Italy for Orizzonte Catania during the season, training in the United States in the off-season.

### Ethnikos Piraeus, Greece

For the 2021-22 season, she is the goalkeeper of Greek Ethnikos Piraeus, a club with big tradition in Greek water polo. On March 30, she won the Women's LEN Trophy with Ethnikos Piraeus. That was the second time Ethnikos has won the title, thus becoming the Greek team with the most in the competition. Meanwhile, that was Johnson's first European club competition title.

### 2020 Summer Olympics

Johnson also competed on the US Olympic water polo team in the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, which were held in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. women's water polo team again earned a gold medal. Johnson made 80 saves during the 2020 Olympics, which was more than any other goalkeeper in the women's and men's tournaments.

### 2024 Summer Olympics

At the age of 29, Johnson appeared in her third Olympiad in Paris at the 2024 Summer Olympics. Their first match was against Greece and the US team won easily and Johnson only gave up 4 points. US Olympic head coach, Adam Krikorian, has said of Johnson:
   She's an incredible athlete. She's got great hand-eye coordination, great reflexes and reactions. And then she's fiercely competitive - fiercely. And you would never know it by her demeanor or by the huge smile on her face. But to us, on the inside, we know how driven she is to be one of the best ever to do it.
Team USA Women's Water Polo ended their Olympic season in fourth place after a 10 - 11 loss to the Netherlands. Johnson only allowed 37 percent of the shots from the Netherlands.

## Activism

As the only Black player and the only person from the East Coast, Johnson described that initially it was a tough transition to play on the Olympic team. She has said,
   I didn't really have a dream to be here because I just didn't see a pathway to be here. I didn't see, like, anyone who looked like me here, anyone with my background here, and it just seemed like a world away.
Her coach encouraged her to embrace her role model status:
   ...it really took me understanding the bigger context of not only our sport, but access to aquatics, the historical exclusion of people of color from aquatics spaces, and it took all of that to start writing a new history, start writing a new story, start opening up that pathway for the people who will follow me - the girls and boys who look like me - to gain that confidence that maybe I didn't have, that dream that I didn't have because I didn't see a lot of people who looked like me in this space.
Her teammates encourage that role as well. Johnson has encouraged younger athletes saying: "We belong in the pool." She has added:
   A lesson that I wish I had heard when I was young was that your difference is the thing that's going to add to the team. It's going to set you apart, and it's going to make your team better. Like, I play this game differently. I look differently than most people in my sport. I tell a lot of kids who, like, tell me that they don't feel like they fit into their team - and I'm like, you keep being you. Your difference makes you great. Your uniqueness is an add, and it takes all types.
In the 2024 Olympics, she has joined with the team's "hype man," rapper Flavor Flav to raise the visibility of water polo in the Black community especially. Johnson said,
   I don’t think people of color have had adequate access to aquatic spaces, and you can see it in the way our sport looks, see it in the way swimming looks. It’s not representative of the U.S. in terms of diversity. One of the biggest barriers for people of color in water spaces, not just water polo, is the story that they don’t belong here. So talking about it and saying you do, seeing a man who’s a rapper, who’s not even part of this space get so passionate and invested in a team like ours, I think is life changing...I think that’s one of those things that breaks down a barrier.
Johnson has observed that in the Black community football is a unifying sport because everyone loves it, has someone they love in the sport and feels like they belong such that it feels like "family." She added, “That’s what I want water polo to feel like for people of color.”

## Awards

* Swimming World 2014 Female Water Polo Player of the Year
* Swimming World 2015 Female Water Polo Player of the Year
* Swimming World 2016 Female Water Polo Player of the Year
* Swimming World 2019 Female Water Polo Player of the Year
* Forbes, Sports 30 Under 30: 2022
* Water polo at the 2022 FINA World Championships – Women's tournament: Most Valuable Goalkeeper
* Water polo at the 2024 World Aquatics Championships – Women's tournament: Best Goalkeeper