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On the morning of the final game of the Masters National Championships, water polo player Gina Marek was so nervous that she threw up. Marek, who grew up swimming at Burgess Pool in Menlo Park and playing water polo for Menlo School, joined the Menlo Mavens water polo masters team at Burgess more than two years ago. She said her long history with Menlo Park, where she was raised, made it especially meaningful.
“It’s fun and special for me as a grown up to come back to this community pool and still be having fun with friends and being on the team,” Marek said.
On June 21, the Menlo Mavens’ Women’s 40+ team won its first gold medal at the USA Water Polo’s 2026 Masters National Championships. Last year, in the team’s first run in the competition, the Mavens’ Women’s 40+ team won silver.
The tournament — where athletes older than 18 compete in age divisions — took place across the greater Los Angeles area over three days. Seven teams competed in the Women’s 40+ division.
Despite their previous success, Michelle Evans said that the team came to this year’s competition with low expectations and was surprised at the results.
“The teams were tough this year,” Evans said, “(and) everyone who was competing was really, really good. And so when we won, it was just this almost disbelief, but also, I was in awe of what we achieved.”
One of the teams the Mavens faced was the Olympic Club, which is known for high performance. In the final game at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California, the Mavens battled the Orange County-based Riptide Aquatics’ team, beating them by 4 points.
In the Women’s 40+ division, each game consists of four, seven-minute periods. As is standard practice in water polo, to kick off the quarter, the ball is thrown into the center of the pool, and at the screech of a whistle, the match begins with each team racing to capture the ball.
“It’s seven minutes of constant swimming, physical wrestling with other players, and just utter movement,” said Carrie Holmberg.
Holmberg, who has been with the Mavens for 15 years, said players are often “fierce,” and the game, a contact sport, can become quite physical. She said injuries like jammed fingers and blows to the face that can result in a broken nose are common, but the athletes frequently choose to tough it out and keep swimming.
The Mavens practice every Sunday at Burgess Pool in Menlo Park. For two hours, team members engage in scrimmages where players match up based on skill level. But the training doesn’t end there — outside of organized sessions, they are expected to swim and lift weights on their own to build the strength needed for water polo.
Many of the women on the team balance their regimen with jobs and families.
“It was so exciting because it’s a lot of different women that are achieving all these different things in their lives other than water polo … to have this additional goal we worked toward and achieved was just really special,” said Marek, who is a partner at the prominent law firm Orrick.
When the Mavens won, Evans couldn’t stop smiling. “(I was) elated,” she said.
Evans, who plays goalie, drives from her home in Morgan Hill each week to attend the Mavens’ practices. “I’m grateful to have the opportunity in my 40s to keep competing at a high level … there’s not a lot of sports where you get to keep doing this,” she said.
Team captain Nancy El-Sakkary, a Stanford water polo alum who now works at Google, said she appreciated the opportunity to play on a team competitive enough to enter tournaments and called the championship an “amazing experience.”
“This is our first major win as a team, so it really felt rewarding to be able to come away with the championship because I think it recognizes the trust we put in each other to show up and prepare and keep building on past years’ experience,” El-Sakkary said.
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