A huge success unafraid of failure
Students taking a Stanford class called “Anthropology of Sport and the Body’’ took in a recent Warriors playoff game as part of their course work. Yes, college labs aren’t what they used to be.
One of the students informed the others that she played on the very court they were watching. It was halftime of a Warriors game about 14 years ago, and she was among the grade schoolers in a brief game.
In the spirit of the moment, the PA announcer started doing play-by-play, and the budding point guard heard him say, “Maggie Steffens dribbling up the court …” She got so excited hearing her name that she immediately launched a shot. From half court.
“A total airball,” she said, retelling the story a few days ago.
Some great athletes say they are driven by the fear of failure more than the thrill of victory. Steffens, perhaps the world’s greatest water-polo player, seems to almost revel in failure, or at least in taxing situations.
There’s ample opportunity for that in her major: science, technology and society. She’ll get her degree in June after starting coursework toward her master’s in management science and engineering. It’s a familiar refrain on the Farm, but someday she hopes to start a company in Silicon Valley, where repeated failures often goad people to success.
“She’ll get in front of groups and talk about struggling in the product-realization lab,” Stanford head coach John Tanner said. “She’s happy to share stories of setbacks and her desire to learn and be challenged.”
That philosophy of plugging through adversity has enabled the Danville native to lead the United States to two Olympic gold medals and Stanford to two national titles. After taking off last season for the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro — she was the MVP for the second straight Games — she returned to Stanford to start amassing degrees and possibly a third NCAA title.
The Cardinal (18-2) open play in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championships this weekend in Los Angeles. Then come the NCAA Championships in Indianapolis, May 12-14.
The Cardinal have won the national title four of the past six years. Winning a fifth won’t be easy, considering that they have lost to USC and UCLA, both in overtime.
Steffens, like many athletic prodigies, was nurtured in her sport from an early age. She started in water polo at age 8, around the time she was launching that airball in Oakland. There was no 10-andunder or 12-and-under team at Diablo Water Polo, so she was thrown in with teenage boys and girls training under Olympian Maureen O’Toole.
“I was just getting beaten around, loving practicing even though I wasn’t doing much,” she said. “My older siblings were doing it. I was always learning from them.”
Her father, Carlos, was a three-time All-American at Cal. Her uncle, Peter Schnugg, was a two-time All-American at Cal.
Her sister, Jessica, six years older, broke a long line of Bears in the family by going to Stanford. Maggie followed Jessica, not only to water-polo stardom on the Farm, but to prominence on the U.S. national team.
At age 18, she scored seven goals in her first Olympic match. She scored five in the gold-medal match, an 8-5 win over Spain, and finished with 21 goals on 27 shots. In Rio four years later, she scored 17 goals on 24 shots. That type of batting average is almost unheard of.
“In the last Olympics,” Tanner said, “she grew into the player who was always setting other people up and emotionally lifting the team throughout.”
She does the same for the Cardinal, although she also leads them in scoring with 50 goals. That gives her 214 for her career, tied for fourth place in school history.
“Every day, she blasts off,” Tanner said, but he’s not talking about her efforts in the pool.
He calls her a “comprehensively brilliant community member. She ties thing together within our team, between our team and other teams in the department, between Stanford athletics and the community in general.
“She’s so energetic, enthusiastic and magnetic that everyone wants to be around her.”
Where does she stand in water-polo history?
“She’s brilliant in every phase of the game,’’ Tanner said. “There’s nobody like her. There hasn’t been either, in women’s water polo. On the men’s side, you see some people have (greatness) in certain areas. Maggie has every piece of the game wired.”