Going for Gold … Times Three

Going for Gold
… Times Three

Isla Vista’s Neushul Family
Rides a Chlorine-Scented Wave
All the Way to the Olympics

By Jim Buckley | September 25, 2024

American eyes turn toward Paris on July 26 for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, but Santa Barbara–area fans will be paying special attention to the women’s water polo event. Former Dos Pueblos High star Ryann Neushul is on the U.S. team challenging for its fourth consecutive gold medal. For the Neushul family, it would also be a case of golden déjà vu: Two other daughters have already won water polo gold — Kiley in 2016, and Jamie in 2021.

As far as I can tell, such a single-family, three-athlete three-peat would be an all-time Olympic first.

Jamie, Kiley, and Ryann all started playing water polo when they were very young. | Credit: Courtesy

Meet the Parents

Each daughter’s success story has been a dream come true for Cathy and Peter Neushul, who not only raised a trio of Olympians but also coached all of them through club water polo. While a trio of such talented sisters is pretty rare, what is perhaps rarer is how the parents and children navigated decades of often-perilous seas of parent-coaching and sports parenting in general. From all accounts, the whole family earned the gold in both areas.

Chlorine is in the Neushul blood. Peter’s father, Michael, swam and played water polo at UCLA in the 1950s. Peter was an All-American and a national champion at UCSB, and met fellow All-American Cathy at the campus pool. At the time, women’s water polo was not even an official NCAA activity, so Cathy has really seen the sport grow.
When oldest daughter Kiley showed early promise, Cathy and Peter started the 805 Water Polo Club. From the first, they had to make sure that being coaches didn’t overwhelm being Mom and Dad.

“It really started more as a water safety type of thing,” says Peter. “We’re very aquatic people; surfing, swimming, and learning to be water-safe was also a great way to tire out the kids.”

The club grew quickly, and Kiley established herself as one of the top young players in the nation. Their timing was good: Women’s water polo became an official CIF (high school) event in 1997, part of the Olympics in 2000, and part of the NCAA (college) in 2001. The Neushuls found themselves riding a chlorine-scented wave of success, and their club soon proved to be among the nation’s best at training future top collegians and national-team members. The club has sent hundreds of players to college teams and won dozens of national championships.

Another veteran water polo coach, Pam Tanase, has known the Neushuls for years. She coached with them, and her children Quinn and Kayla played for and now coach in the 805 Club. “I think one thing that really stands out to me, that starts with Cathy and Peter and then trickles down to the three girls, is just their commitment to training at a very high level,” says Tanase.

“The curriculum that Cathy has set for the kids here has meant that they can go on to play at any university; they can play at any level,” says Peter. “They have all the necessary skills. They know how to train hard enough to do whatever physical workout the college is going to throw at them. And the proof’s in the pudding. We had 11 or 12 players at the NCAA championships this year, representing different universities.”

Sister Story

Kiley came first. She says she was in the water when she was a month old and spent her childhood with a pack of water-loving cousins. “My comfort in the water definitely comes from my parents’ love of swimming and everything aquatic.”

By the early 2010s, Kiley became the first of the Neushul phenoms, joining the Olympic development program at 12 and training with the national team at 14. At Dos Pueblos, she won four CIF titles and led the team to a 67-match winning streak. At Stanford (where all three Neushul athletes would go), she was a four-time All-American, three-time national champ, and two-time winner of the Cutino Award for the sport’s top college player.

In 2016, Kiley was part of the national team that went to the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro (along with the whole cheering Neushul clan). Kiley’s three goals led all scorers in the team’s gold-medal-game 12-5 rout of Italy.

For her part, Jamie remembers that she didn’t actually like water polo at first. “I was really tiny when I started at 7 or 8 years old, and there was no under-10 program, only under-12, so I was playing bigger and older players,” she says. “I remember not loving it.”

That changed as she grew into her body and her sport, but she still reached her peak a little later in life, not making the national team until after her success at Stanford, where she helped win three NCAA championships.

Says Cathy about her middle daughter, “I remember sitting in the stands [at the 2016 Rio Games watching Kiley] and Jamie was probably 21. I remember at the end, she goes, ‘I’m gonna do this.’ She was just fiercely determined.”

Jamie would have to wait to make her dreams come true. In May 2020, COVID forced the postponement of the Tokyo Summer Games to 2021. At that point, the “2020” U.S. women’s team had not been named, but Jamie decided to stick it out in hopes of making the 2021 squad. After months and months of training eight hours a day, she made it and, just like Kiley, carried home the gold. However, she did not have any family to hug after winning — the pandemic forced a spectator-free Olympic Games.

“It was heart-wrenching for me to not have my family there, not have either of my sisters in the pool next to me,” says Jamie. “That colored the whole experience for me. Kiley and I had done everything together up to that point, just to make that specific [2020] team. So, it made me really sad that she wasn’t there with me. At the same time, I had to just accept the experience for what it was.” Jamie and her teammates routed Spain in the final, 14-5.

The Journey to Paris

Ryann came along a bit later; she’s seven years younger than Jamie. She was also a star at Dos Pueblos and is currently at Stanford, where she has already won two national championships. With the national team, she has won World Championship and Pan American Games golds and hopes to add to her treasure chest in Paris.

“As a younger player, Ryann didn’t get tired, ever,” says Kiley. “She’s crazy energetic. She could go and go and go and would never give up.”

Ryann had good role models and good coaches. “Kiley was such an inspiration for me,” she says. “I was very young when she was going through the training with the national team, and I was her biggest supporter. And from Jamie, I learned how to help control my emotions, to try to be logical and calm sometimes.”

This spring, Ryann was called to a meeting with Team U.S.A. head coach Adam Krikorian and his assistants, “And then they just told me I had made the [Olympic] team. It was a very emotional moment for me because I had really started in 2018. It felt like I had been climbing this mountain to try and make this team, and to see that all those dreams were being realized was super emotional. And I definitely cried in that meeting.”

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Siblings in the Games
There are numerous examples of siblings in the Olympics. Four Peruvian brothers played basketball together in 1964. The trio of López siblings were all part of the 2008 U.S. taekwondo team, an American first since the bouncing Tristschlers were 1904 gymnastics Olympians. And three sisters from France competed in moguls skiing in 2018, with one winning a silver medal. Plus, a trio of Estonian triplets ran the 2016 marathon in Rio. But in researching Olympic history, I can’t find any other instances of this exact Neushul scenario: three sisters in consecutive Olympic Games all in the same team sport. If Ryann wins gold, too, that would make it an even more exclusive club! — Jim Buckley

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Coach + Parent

As their trio of future Olympians grew up, the Neushuls made a lot of conscious decisions with their talented kids. The sisters were never (or rarely) given any individual awards on teams coached by Cathy. “One consequence of us being the parents as the coaches was that you’re not going to be the MVP,” says Cathy. “I used that as an opportunity — look what you can do for someone else. They might never have another chance to be an MVP in their life.”

Kiley says they were taught to be a servant to teammates, not to be the stars.

Coach Mom was fierce indeed. Cathy would let other swimmers jump in if they were a few minutes late to practice, but not her daughters. All three Neushul athletes mentioned being kicked out of practices for talking back or not having 100 percent focus, something they said almost never happened to other team members. “She held us to a really high standard,” said Jamie.

“I’ve watched many people try to coach their kids in water polo,” says Cathy. “If anything, I was harsher on them than I was on the others. And I think that might have been difficult at times. But we’d get in the car together; I’d explain that to them. ‘You are going to be held to a higher standard. That’s how it is, you know?’ And I don’t think I ever once heard them say, ‘I wish I was coached by somebody else.’ ”

Kiley backs that up. “My mom coached me from when I was 7 until I was 18, and now, looking back, I would not have had it any other way.”

From Ryann’s perspective, working with a coach/mom who had already trained two Olympians, “She was very much our biggest supporter. But the way she showed that is just a little different than other mothers. She said, ‘Okay, I know you’re going to experience challenges down the road, so I’m going to throw them at you now. I’m going to ref you harder. I’m going to coach you harder. I’m going to expect more from you.’ ”

What happened when the line between Coach and Mom blurred? Jamie remembers, “I really think that my mom did the best job that she possibly could have, separating Mom from Coach and kind of coaching us when we were athletes and then being our mom when we got home. Like if we had a tough practice, it’s not that easy to go home and just turn off the frustration that you have. But we always eased back into it. She would say things like, ‘You know, tomorrow’s another opportunity; let’s try again.’

“She was very black-and-white. These were the rules. Follow them, and you’re good to go. Don’t follow them, and you’re not, and I think keeping things like that made it very hard to hate her in those situations.”

“There were some moments,” laughs Ryann. “I think junior high, high school, where you’re like, ‘Hey, I don’t really want to go be coached by my mom right now. I want to be cool and I don’t want my mom to coach me.’ But then, you know, you get past yourself and you realize she’s the best coach in Santa Barbara by far.”

That’s not to say they didn’t hear negative things from other parents or coaches. But Cathy is adamant that she and Peter were doing things the right way. “I certainly don’t need defending,” she says. “I’ve heard everything you can imagine about me, being the coach. Like you only play your kids, stuff like that.”

When the girls wanted to complain or talk about Coach Mom, Peter was often their sounding board. But they found quickly that the Neushuls were a united front; there would be no playing Mom off against Dad, in the pool or out. 

“He always had her back,” Jamie said. “He would say something like, ‘I understand your frustration, but let’s look at the facts of the situation and what happened. Why did you get kicked out of practice? What did you do?’ He helped us understand a bit. He didn’t take sides.”

“The coolest thing about my dad is, he listens,” says Ryann. “He’s the best listener. I still call him and just chat for 15 minutes, talking about this or that, and he just listens. But he’s always on my mom’s team. That was the coolest thing I learned about parenting from them is, even if you don’t like what the other spouse is doing, you stand by them. He always supported my mother as a coach and as a mom.”

Peter’s expertise was also put to good use. “My dad’s always the one that a lot of us went to, to evaluate our performance,” says Jamie. “Mom is watching every player, and she’s watching the other team, too. But dad was watching the game from more of a parent’s perspective, and I feel like all three of us would go to him just to kind of chat through our performance and how we felt that we played as individuals. Sometimes you just need someone to lend an ear to your frustration. He gave me a safe space to express my insecurities about those situations.”

Multi-Sport Athletes

Before the girls had to focus solely on water polo, the Neushul parents made sure that their active young girls tried other sports. Jamie and Ryann were huge lovers of soccer and played until junior high and even on club teams.

“The best thing we ever did was make Kiley play golf,” adds Cathy. “It was a great way to make this very competitive and successful athlete become humble. That little ball is not going to cooperate like the big [water polo] ball! And it’s turned out well, too; it’s become a sport she can continue socially today.”

Kiley notes that the multi-sport approach — increasingly rare in today’s youth sports scene — paid big dividends once she chose to focus on water polo. “I think my parents were really good when I was a little kid at putting us into a ton of different sports. I’m a true believer — I think because of my parents — in the study of sports. There’s spatial awareness that you can learn from basketball, soccer. You can learn concentration and focus from sports like golf or tennis, individual sports.”

“We all basically played water polo, soccer, and basketball for a pretty long time,” says Jamie. “I played soccer through 8th grade. I remember wanting to be [U.S. national team star] Mia Hamm forever!”

Ryann was so obsessed with soccer that when her club coach wanted a left-footed player, she started practicing endlessly to be able to play well with either foot (she’s right-footed). That flexibility and intensity will pay off in Paris. Ryann will be playing center defense instead of her usual attacking, offensive role.

All In for Academics

It was not just about sports, either. All three girls knew that getting good grades was the only way they could have the time to play the sports they loved. Even then, the future Olympians believed that if sports was not their road, that their mom and dad were okay with that, too — as long as each young woman gave it their best shot.

“I remember asking my dad once, ‘What if school had been difficult for me?’ ” says Jamie. “ ‘What if it took me 20 times longer to learn something than it initially did? What if I wasn’t able to get into Stanford?’ He said, ‘Well, we would have adjusted our expectations. But we knew that you were capable, so we were going to push you to reach your potential.’ ”

Adds Ryann, “They always emphasized in our household that you must be kind to people if you want to be respected — you need to follow suit with your actions and how you treat others. And all three of us have done that.”

For school or life philosophy or for whatever the sports were, the competitive and parental side of the Neushuls was clear. “My parents’ only rule was that if you’re going to do something, you have to commit to it fully because you owe it to the people around you,” says Ryann. “If I wanted to skip a day’s soccer practice, my mom just said, ‘Fine, you’re done [with that team].’ When you commit to something, you’re in it, and you must follow through on the things you say you’re going to do.”

Adds Tanase, “They always modeled that consistency and hard work with the idea that if you put in the time and the effort, you will go far in the sport. No matter how talented you are, you’re going to have to put the time and effort in. And they model that as a family, too.”

Peter remembers how far that commitment went. “I remember lying in bed and there would be a kid at my bedside at 2 a.m. in a swimsuit wearing a backpack, saying we gotta go to work out. No, no, no. You need to go back to bed because it’s not time yet.”

While making their kids hew to their commitments, Cathy and Peter were 100 percent on board, too. Did they ever feel like they missed out on traditional family time because of all the practices and games? “We were able to spend hours of time together driving to and from these events. Those hours helped us connect, to listen, to learn a lot about them and their lives,” says Cathy. “We honestly had more one-on-one time with those kids than most parents do.”

Adds Peter, “I always say to parents [who worry about this issue], ‘Look, you could be at home mowing the lawn or fixing something at the house, but instead you’re driving with these kids, and hopefully you take more than one. So you’ll get that time together, just in a different way than, say, the dinner table.’ ”

There are only so many hours in a day and days in a week, so the commitment to sports meant the Neushul girls did miss some proms or other school events. But they seemed to have all understood that that was the price for the commitment they all had.

The Neushuls are also both emphatic about the support of the community for its help in shaping their Olympian daughters. “It’s not just us,” says Peter. “It’s so many coaches and so many people and so many parents. The community that we built here is a community of success. Santa Barbara sports is very, very supportive in all the sports.”

Ryann’s Time to Shine

The focus for the family now turns to Ryann, who emphatically points to her sisters as role models for her success.

“I looked at them as inspiration. I wanted to win the way they did. I wanted people to speak about me the way they speak about Kiley and Jamie. And I was reminded of this when Kiley was inducted into the [2024 U.S. Water Polo Hall of Fame], where every person that went up to talk about Kylie, not only in their words, but in the way they spoke, you could just feel how incredible she was as a teammate and how incredible she was as a player.”

At Stanford and with Team U.S.A., Ryann is no longer under Coach Mom and Dad. Now the Neushuls are just sports parents like the rest of us. Is that hard, switching from being in charge of the lineup to being in charge of the post-game hugs and in-game chants?

“It was the easiest thing ever,” says Cathy. “I’m not the coach anymore. We’re just Mom and Dad. Of course, we were fortunate that they all had great coaches.”

That’s not to say that the girls didn’t try to complain about those coaches to the coach that knew them best. That didn’t always go as planned.

“You might get frustrated with your college coach,” Cathy says. “Sometimes they can be harsher than they’re used to. And I would just be, ‘Could you please get in that office and thank him for letting you come to this university? You’re getting paid. You’re an employee.’ We taught the girls that they are accountable for everything they do. You can’t blame anybody — not us, not the coach.”

Jamie admitted, “They’re probably the least involved parents when it came to college and the nationals. They were just fans.”

I asked Peter and Cathy to take off their coach hats and reflect on their journey to this point. “Who could plan this?” answers Cathy. “People say, ‘You must be so proud of them.’ I always come back with this: I’m proud of the people that they became. That’s what I’m proud of. Water polo has the glorious side, such as Kiley being inducted into the sport’s Hall of Fame in May. But I got as much out of seeing Jamie make a short video about Kiley, and she was so well-spoken and so poised. That’s what we’re proud of. The people they have become.”

Tanase also made sure to point out that all three Olympians give back to the club that formed them. They have all returned to get into the pool with kids at every level, adding to the legacy of the Neushuls as coaches and mentors. “They definitely had that sense that this is the program that helped elevate us and we’re going to come back and continue to support it as well.”

The whole family will be in Paris to watch Ryann, who is 24. Kiley, 31, will be joined by her husband, Gabriel, a former water polo player she met while playing on a pro team in Spain (where she won a European championship). She’ll take time off from her work as an analyst with Accenture. Jamie, 29, will fly in from San Francisco, where she works in healthcare software. Cathy and Peter said that a big entourage of about 30-plus family and friends will be joining them in the stands in Paris, too. So when Ryann jumps into the pool for the U.S. team, listen for their cheers to be heard all the way back here in Santa Barbara. 

4-1-1

Here is when our local Olympians are set to compete during the first week of competition. 

Team USA Women’s Water Polo vs. Greece on Saturday, July 27 at 6:35 a.m. PT

Team USA Women’s Water Polo vs. Spain on Monday, July 29 at 6:35 a.m. PT

Team USA Women’s Water Polo vs. Italy on Wednesday, July 31 at 9:30 a.m. PT

Team USA Women’s Water Polo vs. France on Friday, August 2 at 9:30 a.m. PT

Team USA Women’s Volleyball vs. China on Monday, July 29 at 8 a.m.

Team USA Women’s Volleyball vs. Serbia on Wednesday, July 31 at 8 a.m.

Team USA Men’s Beach Volleyball (Evans and Budinger) vs. France on Monday, July 29 at 7 a.m.

Team USA Men’s Beach Volleyball (Evans and Budinger) vs. Netherlands on Tuesday, July 30 at 11 a.m

Team USA Men’s Beach Volleyball (Evans and Budinger) vs. Spain on Friday, August 2 at 6 a.m.

All games are broadcast on NBC Peacock.