It's a Thursday afternoon, late spring, deep into the semester at Legends Aquatic Center in Berkeley. There are two ten-foot-wide floating goals a little more than arm's length apart, at the far end of the pool near the dive tower. Along the goal crossbar five water polo caps hang from their respective strings. Isabel Williams, the starting goalie for the Cal women's water polo team, eggbeats in the center of one of the goals. At first, she is still, facing the net, shoulders breaking the water's surface. She floats effortlessly, awaiting instructions on the drills to execute from assistant coach Lance Morrison.  
 
The three backup goalies watch the demonstration. Morrison doesn't bark orders, yell or scream out instructions. The jovial former Division I University of Pacific water polo player turned coach is calm but speaks loud and clear enough to command their attention. Williams' eggbeating generates a propulsive force strong enough to raise her 6'3" body up so that the top of her head grazes the dangling water polo cap from the crossbar before slowly descending. It's like an elevator.
 
"Now the left one," Morrison says. Williams rises at a left angle, and her head touches the left cap. She isn't struggling to breathe. Her legs are not tired. She will touch the right cap only when instructed. But she will eggbeat and float the entire time.
 
Morrison will have 45 minutes with the goalies to work on position specific drills. They will still have an hour and a half after that.
 
On Tuesdays and Thursdays while in season, Williams and her team were in the weight room from 7-8 a.m., and conditioning swimming before watching some film from 8:15 to 8:55 a.m. This is only part of the story of a student-athlete.
 
Williams is a psychology major with a full academic schedule.
 
What drives someone to do this?
 
"I really enjoy the team sport aspect," Williams said.
 
Her water polo journey began at age 8 in Severna Park, Maryland. She was introduced to the game while on the Berrywood Swim Team. The coach used water polo as an incentive for the children to attend practice and break the monotony of swimming laps.
 
"Swimming was too lonely," Williams says. "Staring at the bottom of the pool. Lining up for your race alone. I really enjoy being around people, and water polo kind of fit me better than other sports."
 
Eventually, Williams found a nearby water polo club and joined.
 
Williams and her mother, Kari, eventually moved to South Pasadena, California when she turned 16.
 
"I outgrew the East Coast a little bit," she said. "There weren't many resources or games back-to-back. I wanted to continue this path and it is so much bigger out here."
 
And she found success.  
 
Williams competed at the Junior Olympics with Rose Bowl – a water polo club team based in Pasadena. But her accolades and achievements before coming to Cal did not end there. She was a member of the 2018 Team USA Futures International Team and played for Team USA at the 2019 Junior World Championships.
 
Cal head coach Coralie Simmons says Williams' competitiveness and work ethic is second to none. That, combined with her intelligence, makes her a success in and out of the pool. She graduated high school after her junior year, so she was younger than most of the freshman at the No. 1-ranked public school in the country.
 
But her first season in 2020 was cut short due to COVID.  
 
"It was really hard to be away from a sport that was so much of my life," Williams says. "I left my high school, I moved cross country for something like this. It was really hard to just not have a pool. A lot of them were closed, or if one was open, you had a lane to practice in. You need teammates to play; there's not much to do on your own."
 
She focused on staying in shape, being prepared for anything. She tried to find pools further away with the hopes of availability to practice.
 
Williams is grateful for her teammates and their effort to stay together. They bonded online through Zoom meetings over the summer. They talked on the phone or met safely to stay connected.
 
In a sense, COVID solidified the importance of water polo in Williams. "Being away from it, it didn't feel the same," she said. "I missed it. You never know how much you loved something until its gone."
 
Not everyone is cut out to be a water polo goalkeeper. Recently, Williams was named to the All-MPSF First Team due to her leading the conference at 10.6 saves per game. She is also fourth on Cal's all-time single-season saves list with 223 heading into this weekend's NCAA Championship in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
 
When prompted why she chose to play goalie, she said: "I'm pretty tall."
 
She's only half-kidding. Her older brother, Ronan, is also 6-3 and played goalie at Navy. "So I followed in his footsteps," she said. "But it started with my club team needing a goalie and it kind of meshed into my personality. I think it's really awesome."
 
Being a goalie means being a good leader. Goalkeepers can see the entire pool and are required to communicate effectively and concisely. While on defense, the goalie directs the players to close any open gaps and serves as the eyes and the ears of players who can't see everything.
 
"She always knows what's going on," Simmons says. "When your squad is trying to achieve big things, you need someone like Williams to lead the defense."
 
Kari would be the first to point out her daughter's leadership capabilities. She would say that her daughter would always be in a leadership position, and it started at a young age. She would always be in charge of something.

"As I've grown up, I've grown into that (leadership) role," Williams said. "I like being that for someone and being to help people out."
 
Her leadership potential has grown at Cal. She took advantage of the campus services provided by the Cameron Institute for Student-Athlete Development. "There are a lot of resources here that have helped me focus on my abilities and define my purpose," Williams said.
 
Williams is African American, and after George Floyd's murder in 2020, she led the efforts to craft a statement from the Cal women's water polo team. She also helped organize a Black Lives Matter event where members of her team and other Cal student-athletes walked 8.46 miles in acknowledgement of the 8 minutes, 46 seconds that Floyd was held forcibly down by Minneapolis police.
 
Representation matters, not only in Williams' community, but her sport, too. She wants to make the sport accessible and available. She has worked with the Alliance for Diversity and Equity in Water Polo (ADEWP) – a nonprofit advocating for inclusion and equity that provides education and opportunity to anyone who shares the love for water polo. According to ADEWP's website, there is a glaring 2018 statistic – throughout history only two Black men and one Black woman have been on a U.S. Olympic Roster.
 
Williams' wants to change this. "I want to make this sport more known because I can't imagine myself without water polo," she said. "I want to give people the opportunity regardless of what they look like to have the same opportunities I have. So much of this sport is giving back to it."
 
There are two African American players on the current Golden Bear women's squad. "You unconsciously notice when you go somewhere and don't look like anyone else," Williams said.
 
It is discouraging, she admits, but she chose Cal because of the close-knit team and the Berkeley environment. "You're more than a student-athlete in a swimsuit," Williams said. "You're a human being with goals, and you can do anything you want with that."
 
Williams enjoys the flexibility and range of classes Berkeley has to offer. She isn't pressured to conform to someone else as a student. "I wanted a chance to grow both as a water polo player and as a person, and everything about Cal has allowed me to do that," she said.
 
Williams' words carry weight. There's pressure of being a student-athlete, let alone in one of the toughest conferences of the sport. Adding to that weight is the pressure of being an African American woman. It is a lot to carry. But she will not drown.
 
"If I could say something to a younger me, I would say keep going," Williams said. "Keep pushing through. At times it can be stressful and overwhelming, but you will be surrounded by a great community."

Francisco Martinezcuello is a student in UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.