BRIDGEPORT, Pa. — Former Arizona State University All-America selection and China Olympian Ao Gao is the guest on Episode 026 of the PoloCAST Podcast with George Gross, Jr.
A biweekly series highlighting some of water polo’s best minds and athletes over the past 50+ years, PoloCAST is available on Apple Podcasts, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, RadioPublic, Anchor and Spotify.
Hosted by CWPA Hall of Fame inductee and former Team Canada Olympian George Gross, Jr., the podcast provides listeners with more than just an X’s and O’s conversation about water polo – but a dialogue about what helped good players, coaches and administrators reach the top of the game.
New episodes typically release on the first and third Tuesday of every month.
Follow the entire series by CLICKING HERE.
About Ao Gao: A three-time All-America selection (2013, 2015: Second Team; 2016: First Team) and a member of the women’s national team for China which claimed a Silver Medal at the 2007 World Junior Championship, Ao Gao competed at the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, and London, England, respectively. A native of Beijing and a graduate of Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Broadcast Journalism and a Master of Arts in Sports Journalism, she compiled 131 goals, 100 assists and 131 steals during a four-year career that spanned 2012-14 and 2016. She is currently an Associate Editor with ESPN (Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) under the international production department with the ESPN China group. Gao joined ESPN in December 2019 and is currently based in Bristol, Conn. She has been working on various projects this past year, specializing in X Games features, tennis feature content, Special Olympics distribution as well as assisting on National Basketball Association (NBA) on-court game coverage and features production. Her passion for visual storytelling and video production emerged while for China as she recorded moments with the team and created mini-documentaries highlighting their run up to the Olympics in Beijing and London. Named a 2013 Arthur Ashe Jr Sports Scholar, she attend the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, after claiming a coveted spot in the ASU Cronkite School of Journalism Olympics program in 2016 to cover the Olympics as a graduate student. One of her feature stories was selected by the Society of Professional Journalists and won the National Television Sports Photography award in 2016. Past experience in sports journalism includes jobs with the Pac-12 Networks, ESPN, the Doug Ducey campaign for Governor of Arizona and with Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die.
