Interview: Tilly Kearns
The Stingers water polo star sat down with HER WAY ahead of the World Championships which start later this week.
To say it’s been a big twelve months for Tilly Kearns would be somewhat of an understatement. This time last year the Australian Stingers Water Polo star was preparing to go to her second Olympics.
Until Paris, the Stingers didn’t have a very good recent record at big tournaments in when it came to progressing to the medal games, placing fifth in Tokyo and then sixth at the 2023 World Champs. In fact, Tilly told HER WAY at an Australian Olympic Team event in the leadup,
“It’s those quarter finals games, they’re the hardest ones to win. In my whole career I’ve won one quarter final.”
History now shows that the Stingers not only made it through the quarter finals, they then accounted for the USA in a dramatic semi final which saw them ultimately secure a silver medal. A year on from those emotional scenes at the pool deck in Paris, I asked Tilly if being an Olympic silver medalist now feels normal:
“Yeah, I think I've just gotten used to it now. It's still a bit of a pinch me moment, still a very exciting thing to look back on. But even just the other day, I crafted a tablet while going through all the Olympic memorabilia, including the medal, and it brought back all those memories. And I re-read my journal from every day during the Olympics, and it was just super special. But it's good to be home now to be able to relive it all with everyone.”
I asked Tilly the obvious question as to where she keeps her medal, and she took the opportunity to claim innovating an unusual storage place used by many on the Aussie Olympic team.
“Yeah, I think I might have been the sock trend-starter, at least in my team. We got rugby socks as part of our uniform. And obviously we're water polo players, so we don’t need to wear socks or shoes. So those socks were going to go to waste.
But that's my portable one [storage location].
And then when at all other times, it's actually… we got given this big box that you open up and it just sits right in the middle there. It's really special.”
Life after the Paris games presented some huge highs and great opportunities for Tilly, from welcome home parades, media appearances and even as a speaker at the SXSW innovation event in Sydney. But while some of her teammates continued to leverage the chances that come with being an Olympic medalist, Tilly headed back to the US to get back in the pool with her USC Trojan college teammates for her final season. How was it to go from that enormous high, to back to early mornings in the pool in Southern California?
“Yeah, it was exciting. The game, I mean, no matter what you win or don't win at the Olympics, the game stays the same.
It's the same. It's just water polo. So getting back into it was really fun with new teammates at USC, a whole new group of girls that I had to relearn all of our tendencies and how to fit back in with that team, which was exciting.
But it was just a very different kind of pressure, a bit more freedom than what the Olympics was, but just a lot of fun to get back in to a less pressure, a lower pressure situation.”
Tilly’s final season at college saw her become one of the all time greats at USC. She was nominated as one of three finalists for the prestigious Cutino Award for National college player of the year, her third time making that list.
Her final season also saw become a three time NPSF All-First Team Player, and she finished her career as the third highest all-time scorer for the Trojans. Tilly first left Australian shores for college as a 19 year old, so how does she reflect on that period of her life which has now come to a close?
“I would say the whole college experience is hard to sum up in a few words. It lasted seven years because of the Olympics and that stopped the progress a little bit. But that last year, I think, was really memorable in a whole different way.
I was kind of the leader of a really young team and I knew that I had an impressionable group of girls that I was kind of leading and I knew that everything I would say or do to them would have a big impact. So my biggest focus of that whole season was just to make sure that they were having a great time and I was being a good role model and leader for them. And we made it to the final - my fourth year making it to the final and losing the final.
I was upset, but it wasn't the most devastating loss because I feel like I have grown so much as a person and a player just from being around that and having a new responsibility in a team.
With everything like Olympics kind of breaking it up, we had to stay there for a lot longer, I guess, than maybe a normal person's college experience would be.”
Despite her college career and education punctuated with the covid pandemic and taking time off to prepare for two Olympics, Tilly is all for the college experience.
“It was slow progress, but I obviously wouldn't change a thing. I loved my experience at USC so much and I would advocate for anyone to go to a college in the US to get the same friendships that I did and the same experiences and learn a lot more about their sports, whatever the sport is.“
Before returning to Australia to prepare for the World Championships, Tilly experienced one final American rite of passage, the college graduation.
“Graduation in the US is intense. There's so many rituals and traditions that you've got to hit. It's basically just like a whole couple of weeks, or at least if it's just at the end, the three days at the end. It's huge and you've really got to keep all those traditions because all the girls are like, yeah, we're going to do this and this and this. And we don't have that in Australia.
So it was really cool to experience the American side, and we all know the Americans love to do everything over the top. So it was really fun to get involved and play, I don't know, play, pretend that I really care about all those traditions. But it was really fun.”
Anyone who follows the water polo star on social media or YouTube would have seen that college journey, which like many other aspects of her life, Tilly has been keen to share with her large following. In the lead up to Paris last year, HER WAY attended a warmup game in Sydney where many girls queued to meet Tilly afterwards, inspired by her career but also by how relatable and accessible she’s become via social media. I wondered how she approaches the purpose and intent of that enormous reach she has got.
“Oh, I'm very grateful for the platform that I have. And I love nothing more than seeing the girls and boys as well with their signs at games, and just honestly showing up because I think there's a lot of times that often people don't even know that we have games on because it's not really out there being pushed.
But more, I just love hearing about the participation rates increasing, especially in my high school and in my town in Sydney. Just across the board, participation rates have boosted heaps. And part of that is maybe from my social media, but I think the biggest part is just the team and how me and all the Stingers really represent ourselves, especially online.
I think it's so important for athletes to post themselves online because if you can see it, you can be it. Everyone says that. But more to improve like ratings for women's sports, you've got to follow the athletes and follow their stories.
I love posting my story in the most authentic way possible. I love posting and I love that people get to follow along what I'm doing and what the team's up to as well.
I think before maybe the Olympics, a lot of people didn't even know what the sport was. Even when they're watching it, I'm sure a lot of people don't know the rules and things like that.
So I think that having a presence just gets to explain those little details that people might not understand, but also see what it takes in the whole four years in the lead up to the Olympics instead of just the two weeks that we're on the TV screens. You get to really connect with the athletes and see their side of things and the hard days and the good days. And then you get to ride the rollercoaster with the athletes.
If you're seeing them online, you get to see their losses and their wins and kind of be there through it all. And then when they're at the Olympics, winning a silver medal, you get to say that you followed their whole journey and you got to see what it takes. So I think it's really cool, both for myself to post, but also for the fans and the viewers at home to get to see both sides of…me, really.”
The full strength Stingers side are back together, ready to take on the World Championships in Singapore, starting later this week. While several of the Paris Olympics team joined many new faces in helping the Aussies secure the World Champs spot earlier this year at the World Cup, Tilly is one of many veterans who has now returned to the squad.
“Yeah, some of the girls have been together while others were in Europe or America, like myself, competing all around the world. So to get us all back together again in the same environment is really exciting, especially off the back of such a successful Olympic campaign. We only lost three players from the Olympics, so we still have a really big core group and we get to add in some fresh new players, which is really exciting.
I think we're just continuing to grow from the Olympics. [Coach] Bec… she hasn't taken a step back at all, it's still very much hard work every single day. But if that's what gets us on top of the podium and keeps us there, then we're a really hardworking team and we're excited.”
Remaining on the podium at major tournaments is a huge motivating factor for the team as the new Olympic cycle starts.
“Yeah, of course. And I think we want to prove that Paris wasn't just a fluke, it wasn't just a good tournament for us, it's actually our identity now, it's just who we are. So we're excited to prove that to the world”, Tilly said.
With so many of this squad now bonded by the medal from Paris, how do those members of the team ensure the new faces are integrated seamlessly?
“We place a lot of importance on not making our identity the silver medal. It's great and it's showing where we're at currently, but the silver medal definitely doesn't define us. But throughout even the lead up to the Olympics, we focused a lot on really including everyone around the country. The silver medal wasn't just the girls who were in Paris, but it was all the reserves and all the staff at home.
Everyone played a key role in that. So I think it's easy and we kept them in the loop with everything that we were doing and we continue to do that. Even the girls that haven't made the World Championships, we keep them in the loop.
So I think, I hope to hear that it's easy for them, but yeah, we definitely don't talk about it that much in training, we just focus on the now and focus on what's next.“
Having interviewed a few of the Stingers in the past twelve months, two words are often spoken about - culture and legacy. It’s something the experienced players such as Tilly, new captain Bronte Halligan, Abby Andrews and Alice Williams are keen to filter down to those coming into the team’s environment.
“When you talk about the legacy of the Stingers, I think that goes all the way back to the 2000s or well, pre-2000s, but especially Sydney Olympics in year 2000, when it was the first year that women's water polo was allowed in the Olympics. And it was the Stingers back then that protested and advocated for the team to be added into the Olympics and for women to get a chance to represent their countries at an Olympic Games, because before it was only men. So I think that's where it started, and they won gold that year.
And so I think that's where the legacy started and we wanted to carry on that tradition. And ever since then, just how can we get back on top of that podium? And this is the closest we've ever been for them, yeah, to those golden girls. So they kind of set the stage and then we're hopefully carrying on that legacy.
But I think we're just a really fearless team. We're a really brave team. That's one of our core values, and ‘Respectful’ is another one.
Our new core values this cycle is vulnerability and commitment. And I think that really just outlines who we are. We're a really vulnerable team. We get really down and deep with each other. A lot of conversations, a lot of really breaking down walls. And we're just so committed to our goals.”
So what are the Stingers internal expectations for the World Aquatics Championships, which start with a game against hosts Singapore?
“We're really good at staying in the now and taking it one game at a time. Hopefully we win every game and we keep winning them all to be on top of that podium. But I think as long as we're playing the best water polo that we know how to, hopefully the rest will take care of itself.”