The regimen must have been effective, as Champion earned three Junior Olympian All-American honors and played for the U.S. National Junior Team. After foregoing a chance to play for her hometown team, Stanford, Champion has excelled at the collegiate level at Princeton. This season, the No. 16 Tigers will lean on Champion more than ever: With 42 goals last season, she is the team’s leading returning scorer.
Champion initially hated playing water polo. She and her three older sisters, who grew up in Hawaii and California, began as swimmers. As water polo exploded in popularity during the early ’90s, Champion and her sisters started playing with the Stanford Water Polo Club. Champion’s parents had to offer incentives, mainly in the form of candy and other treats, to entice their daughter to continue with the sport.
“My parents had to bribe us to go to practice,” Champion recalled. “It’s funny, because I grew to love it.”
Champion spent the summer of 2006 in Europe with the U.S. National Junior Team, allowing her to transition smoothly into collegiate water polo. As a freshman, Champion netted 35 goals in an offense that relied heavily on top scorers Elyse Colgan ’07 and Karina Reyner ’07. Despite her youth, Champion was the Tigers’ fourth-leading scorer and trailed only Colgan’s 73 goals scored among the team’s utilities.
Head coach Luis Nicolao was impressed with Champion from the start.
“Phoebe is a talented athlete [who] has been driven to do the best she can from the day she walked on campus,” Nicolao said.
For Champion, however, playing well as an individual has never hindered the Tigers’ collective goals. Indeed, Nicolao stressed her commitment to teamwork.
“She is a leader in and out of the water,” Nicolao said. “She is always trying to provide motivation for her teammates.”
Champion echoed this assessment of herself.
“I try to be a good role model,” Champion said. “I try to be pretty vocal in the water … because the more communication the better in water polo. I just try to be a good teammate.”
After another stint with the national junior team in 2007, Champion spent her sophomore season as one of the centerpieces of a more balanced offense. Last season, no Tiger scored more than 50 goals. Eight players tallied more than 20 goals, however, and Champion was second on the team with 42.
Older and wiser, Champion explained that she had to adjust to the East Coast’s scrappier style of play and the increased number of cheap shots during her first season.
“I’ve gotten a little bit craftier,” Champion said.
Her newfound guile clearly paid off. Champion’s outstanding season earned her first-team All-Southern and All-Eastern accolades, and she was also named an Honorable Mention All-America. As a team, Princeton also succeeded, winning the Southern title in a 10-9 overtime nailbiter against Bucknell in which Champion scored two key goals.
Champion has clearly followed the family tradition of excellence in water sports, but the influence of her older sisters doesn’t end there. Because of a report on animal cruelty that one of her sisters gave, Champion became a vegetarian in the first grade and recently became a full vegan.
“I got a lot more health-conscious, not just in terms of animal rights but also just for my body,” Champion said.
The change makes Champion one of a small but significant number of athletes on campus who are either vegetarian or vegan. The change wasn’t easy, Champion said, citing her love of cookies and ice cream as an obstacle she had to overcome along the way.
Though the competition will likely be a lot tighter at both the Southern and Eastern levels this season, Champion laid out some ambitious goals for the Tigers.
“We’d love to defend our Southern title and at least get to the Eastern Championship game, if not win it,” Champion said.
In the beginning, candy was the key to getting Champion to embrace water polo. Later, a boatload of bagels kept her going through grueling practices. Now, however, Champion mainly feasts on the oppositions’ defenses.
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