Brenda Villa
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| Olympic medalist | |||
 Brenda Villa |
|||
| Medal record | |||
| Women's water polo | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Silver | 2000 Sydney | Team | |
| Bronze | 2004 Athens | Team | |
Brenda Villa (born April 18, 1980 in Los Angeles, California) is a Mexican-American world-class water polo player for the US National and Olympic teams.
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 and was a girls' 1st Team All-American all four years she competed at the high school level. At Bell Gardens High School, Villa played with the boys' team because her school didn't have a girls' team.
Villa came to Stanford in 1998 as the program’s most heralded recruit. Redshirted 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, she scored 172 goals. In 2002 she led her Stanford team with 60 goals to win the NCAA Women's Water Polo Championship; they had finished second the previous season, the first year the competition was held. Villa was awarded the 2002 Peter J. Cutino Award as the top female college water polo player in the United States.
[edit] 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, which qualified the team for the 2004 Summer Olympics. As a 20-year-old, she led the US team with nine goals at the Sydney Olympics, where the Americans took the silver medal. 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, her third of the game, and another in a penalty shootout, 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, earning a bronze medal. Villa was team captain of the 2005 US National Team coached by two-time Olympian Heather Moody, winning a silver medal at the FINA World Championship in Montreal.
In 2005, Villa became assistant coach of the womens' water polo team at Cerritos College in Norwalk, California. The Falcons ended the season with a 21-11 record, a new school record for most wins in a season. She is now playing with the international club team Orizzonte “Geymonat” Catania (Italy); after the professional water polo season, Villa plans to rejoin the US National Team in spring of 2006.
[edit] 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.
