LA JOLLA, Calif. – After four years in the pool at UC San Diego, she has cemented herself as a standout as the women's water polo program has transitioned into the Big West era. A four-time All-American honoree, an All-Big West selection in 2022, and a UC San Diego Athlete of the Year in 2020, she has either led or finished second on the team in steals in each of her four seasons.
 
She is Taylor Onstott, and she is one of a core group of exiting seniors who is leaving more than a cap number behind. She'll be leaving behind a legacy that focuses on leadership, continuing to build the UC San Diego team culture, and defensive excellence.
 
Taylor came to UC San Diego as part of a freshman class of nine scholar-athletes back in 2018, a group that included six Southern California players, including her eventual fifth-year teammates Ciara Franke and Bennett Bugelli. She credits the SoCal water polo community for some of the early bonding this freshman class was able to do in her first collegiate season.
 
"You know all the people you grew up playing against, we have the junior Olympics over the summer, you see the same club teams all the time," says Taylor. "Ciara Franke and Bennett Bugelli, I've been playing against them since early high school. You're bound to know someone or recognize someone."
 
That tight-knit community is part of what helped steer Taylor towards water polo years before she dove into the pool at Canyonview Aquatics Center. Back in middle school, Taylor began playing water polo after one of her friends from her soccer team suggested she give it a shot. Almost right away, the sport became her go-to, and something that she saw herself wanting to pursue in high school and beyond.
 
"Growing up, my brother was an athlete, and he was a few years older than me, so I kind of knew that if I wanted to play a sport in college that I'd need to take it really seriously and be super competitive," remembers Taylor. "So when I started playing high school, I was like 'I want to be on varsity, I want to be playing above my age group,' so I definitely started to branch away from the players I had started playing with."
 
After being named to the All-CIF First Team in each season at Carlsbad High School in North County San Diego, Taylor made the move to UC San Diego to continue her water polo career, joining her former opponents Bugelli and Franke in a program that was continuing to build an identity that Taylor was immediately drawn to.
 
"One thing that attracted me to UC San Diego was our team culture," says Taylor. "When I came on my official visit I was like "Wow, I love this team," so when I came in as a freshman it was really easy to integrate, and then obviously when you have a group you just kind of click with it makes for a great environment to play, it's more of a fun thing to do [when] you're with your friends every day, [and] it doesn't feel like an obligation."
 
Earning ACWPC All-America Honorable Mention and WWPA Newcomer of the Year honors as a freshman, Taylor certainly made herself an impact player right away, and would continue to cement her bond with Franke and Bugelli as the years progressed.
 
"It was really fun to have a tight-knit class where we all grew together, [because] it made you want to do better so that we could all play together," says Taylor. "Our freshman year, four freshman started, and it was cool because we had all this time ahead of us to play with each other and learn each other, and that definitely came to fruition the longer I stayed."
 
That connection grew even stronger between Taylor and Bennett over the course of the 2021-2022 school year, as the pair undertook the Master's in Public Health program in a fitting fashion––together.
 
"We were in the same exact classes, [which] definitely eased the adjustment going into grad school," says Taylor of her first year in the MPH program at UC San Diego. "It was nice having Bennett along for that journey so that we could struggle together at times and also have someone who knew exactly what I was going through."
 
Fast forward to the beginning of their final season, with four more years under their belts, and the trio of Franke, Bugelli, and Onstott were back together in the pool for one last season, their fifth since joining the Tritons back in 2018. Once again, a strong group of freshmen buoyed a team that lost a pair of key seniors in team captain and All-Big West Second Team selection Grace Pevehouse and All-Big West Honorable Mention Tera Richardson.
 
But with a new-look team came the opportunity for Onstott and her fellow fifth years to promote the team culture that had been so integral to their success a few years back as freshmen.
 
"For me, it was really awesome having such a big incoming freshmen class to just impart all of this knowledge, to show them, 'This is how we do things and this is where the program is going and where we want to be,'" reflects Taylor. "We definitely attract people who really want to be a part of this culture, too [and] it was cool to be able to be a part of facilitating that instead of just being along for the ride. When you're a lower classman you're just following what everybody's doing, but it was nice to really contribute to setting the tone for our final season."
 
And part of building that team culture requires team-bonding experiences and being together in person as a large group, something Taylor honed in on as being a huge boost for her and the team as many COVID-19 restrictions were lifted prior to this season. Team-building traditions like the ocean swim in La Jolla Cove and the Triton Invite returning, along with fans also coming back to fill the stands for this season, all provided a lift.
 
"Last year, I wasn't in the water so I didn't really know what it was like to play without anyone in the stands," says Taylor, who did not play in 2021 due to a medical redshirt. "I was the only person in the stands actually, so I was kind of on the opposite side of that. But it was so cool after having not been able to play to finally be back and have it feel like it did before all the COVID stuff happened and my injury. That was really special to me."
 
For Taylor, having fans in the stands and feeding off the energy they can provide became a highlight of her season.
 
"You're feeding off this competitive energy, not just in your sport but from the people who are watching it and love to watch people compete," says Taylor. "I definitely feel like I'm someone who kind of feeds off of that, [and] if what's happening around me is high energy, I want to be high energy too.
 
Fans brought this energy to Canyonview Pool this season, as the Tritons pulled off come from behind wins in front of their home crowd against Long Beach State during Big West play and staved off a comeback from Loyola Marymount on Senior Day. But the real mettle of this team was displayed during the Big West Tournament. And of course, Taylor was right in the thick of it.
 
The Tritons faced UC Davis in the first round of the Tournament, doing battle with an Aggies team that had defeated UC San Diego handily in all three of their matchups during the season. And even after going down 3-0 in the first quarter, the Tritons were able to find a way to push the match to overtime, before eventually earning the program's first ever Big West Tournament win in a 12-11 thriller.
 
"It really just shows one thing that this team had this season was a lot of resiliency," says Taylor of the team's performance. "We never gave up, we never stopped working, and that really paid off when it mattered."
 
It almost paid off again the next day, when the Tritons took on the tournament hosts and fourth-ranked team in the nation, the Hawai'i Rainbow Wahine. Though UC San Diego ended up losing 14-12 in that match, the results were representative of that same resiliency and point towards a program on the rise.
 
"I was so proud of all of our freshmen who stepped up during that tournament, and really seeing the end result of our season and the journey we'd been on as a team," says Taylor. "Obviously, it was an emotional game for us seniors, our last game. It was a good last game for me, it was competitive, it was playing an elite team and I had a lot of fun."
 
One freshman that stood out to her in particular was Courtney Okumura, who played one the same side in the pool as Taylor on offense and, like Taylor back in 2018, was a mainstay in the starting lineup as a freshman.
 
"I love it when people are like, "I want to do what you do, how do you do that?" I definitely had a lot of those moments with Courtney, so just getting to really help her in the water was definitely super rewarding for me," says Taylor. "People did that for me, now I do it for the lower classmen, it's kind of like the cycle of sports."
   
Besides working with this year's freshmen, Taylor sees a path to helping out on the pool deck again next year at UC San Diego as a volunteer coach whenever she has the time. She'll be around campus as she finishes up her MPH with a health policy concentration and begins applying to nurse practitioner school.
 
"I'd love to coach and impart my knowledge," says Taylor. "It's one of those things where I feel like a lot of players who play for so long and then finish, a lot of them end up coaching because you're giving back what's been given to you. That's important to me."
 
Another aspect of water polo that's important to her is defense, the key piece of her game she hopes to pass on to the next generation of players coming through the UC San Diego women's water polo program.
 
"Defense has always been my favorite part of the game, and I feel like I take a lot of pride in my defense, it's something I've worked at for a long time, [so] to be honest, I hope it's just something everyone picks up," says Taylor. "I think moving forward, it will just be something that is a part of the UC San Diego game plan, like 'We want to run a good press, we want to prevent the ball from swinging into two meters.' The hope is that Ciara and Bennett and I imparting how we play defense, it kind of just gets passed along."
 
And with all she's been able to accomplish to this point, it'd be hard to bet against her defensive legacy being anything less than cemented into the team culture.

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About UC San Diego Athletics
After two decades as one of the most successful programs in NCAA Division II, the UC San Diego intercollegiate athletics program has begun a new era as a member of the Big West Conference in NCAA Division I. The 23-sport Tritons earned 30 team and nearly 150 individual national championships during its time in Divisions II and III and helped guide 1,400 scholar-athletes to All-America honors. A total of 83 Tritons have earned Academic All-America honors, while 37 have garnered prestigious NCAA Post Graduate Scholarships. UC San Diego scholar-athletes exemplify the academic ideals of one of the world's preeminent institutions, graduating at an average rate of 91 percent, one of the highest rates among institutions at all divisions. For more information on the Tritons, visit UCSDtritons.com or follow UC San Diego Athletics on social media @UCSDtritons.