LOS ALAMITOS, Calif. — For the U.S. Women’s National Water Polo team, the drought is over.

Over the past six months, 22-year-old Maddie Mussleman has felt like a fish out of water.

“It’s the longest I’ve ever not played water polo,” said the Corona Del Mar native.

For a team sport like water polo, the COVID-19 pandemic limited not only group gatherings, but also access to pools.

The women of Team USA were finally given the green light to return to activities at their Los Alamitos training location in early October.

“Being outside the pool for months, it’s a little painful to get your body back into the rhythm of things,” said Mussleman, who was a member of the team that brought home the gold from the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics.

In April, Mussleman and her teammates found themselves in turbulent waters when their Olympic goals were no longer in sight.

“I think it was a lot of sadness at first, just a lot of unknowns just because we didn’t know what the Olympics were going to look like, or if they were going to even happen,” she said.

Having won the gold before her freshman year at UCLA, Mussleman is now a redshirt senior and has made the decision to take this year off to once again pursue her Olympic dreams. This year’s hiatus could have been the perfect opportunity to walk away but instead it made Mussleman fall even more in love with the sport.

“When you take a step back and you can’t do it, and you don’t have the choice of not playing, I think you realize how much you love it," she said. “To get the opportunity to train and get better again, I’d never pass that up in a million years... You can put your life on pause for another year just to achieve your dreams. I think a lot of people would do it.”

It’s been months of treading water. Now the women of Team USA are moving forward and taking strokes towards Tokyo.