“I think water polo girls are just a special breed of human,” Matilda ‘Tilly’ Kearns says with a knowing smile as she describes to Olympics.com how she first got into her sport.
Growing up as the daughter of Australian rugby union legend Phil Kearns, she always felt an intense curiosity about life as an athlete. But even as nature and nurture combined to give her a sport-centric view of the world, her destiny wasn’t always fixed on water polo.
“I think at one stage I thought it was going to be swimming”, she says jokingly. “I guess I was close, but I definitely wouldn’t be hitting those times ever in my life”.
Somewhat at odds with her determinist outlook, her introduction to the world of caps, goals, and balls came by chance — when a friend needed an extra player and she happened to be available that night.
The connection was instant.
“I played water polo because I loved it. That’s still why I play it now. I just happened to excel at it and be pretty good.”
Kearns “pretty good” somewhat understates her rapid rise that saw her begin training at the New South Wales Institute of Sport at 13 years old and in her first Olympic Games at the age of 20 for Tokyo 2020 in 2021. In between times, she even leapt to play water polo Stateside at the University of Southern California as she hunted even more progress and was rewarded with another selection – and a silver medal – at Paris 2024.
Tilly Kearns on addressing periods in sports: ‘It’s not taboo’
Outside the pool, her bond with water polo is just as strong.
Over 630,000 followers across various social media platforms tune in to watch the Australian give regular updates on the life and times of a water polo athlete. And it’s easy to see why.
Just like her online presence, Kearns is affable, charmingly funny and above all honest, and it’s the latter quality she believes is why people have gravitated towards her content.
“I just like to capture little moments. And that’s why it is really authentic and organic and nothing’s really curated too much,” she says of her online profile.
Even its origin story has a certain genuineness to it, with Kearns confessing she first started a dedicated Instagram page in high school.
“The girls of my school convinced me to make it, but I made a page called ‘Official Tilly Kearns’ and it was just like a joke with me and my friends but it got such a good reception and I was like, ‘Hang on, maybe I actually do have a bit a knack for this!'”
It came as a surprise to Kearns that the page would flourish with interest.
“I thought it would start and stop there at the Olympics, but it just kept going. And then I thought it was quite beautiful that I could share the whole journey from the end of the Tokyo Olympics right until Paris, and everyone who was with me from the beginning, got to share the whole journey instead of just tuning in for the two weeks of the Olympics and then tuning out and saying, see you in another four years.”
Life on a college campus, an American Football-playing boyfriend, Justin Dedich, who would eventually join the NFL, a look at the realities of water polo training – so much of Kearns’ experience as an athlete is available to view through her channels.
And while the energy is mostly fun, Kearns has also found herself unexpectedly addressing more serious topics, including the subject of losing periods in elite sports and diet.
“To me, that is like every day, and it’s insane that other girls don’t talk about that. Because me and my teammates are just so open, almost disturbingly so. We know everything about each other, we’ve seen everything, there are no boundaries between me and my teammates,” Kearns says, talking about the subject of periods. “It wasn’t until I just posted something that I didn’t think twice about, and it got a great response. And people were asking to hear more, and I was kind of shocked that I was like, ‘Oh, does not everyone talk like this? Am I, are we the weird ones?’”
Calmy and casually, Kearns collected questions and began addressing them. Revealing how she had lost her period at the age of 17, and thinking it was a good thing. It wasn’t until she overheard conversations with older teammates that she recognised what had happened wasn’t healthy.
“It’s the sisterhood,” she says. “They become your sisters, and everything’s so open. And the older girls in my team, when I was young and coming through, helped me grow up, and they helped me see a lot about the world and understand a lot of things that I realised that I was actually so lucky to have that, and not everyone has that.
“So I guess on the internet, if people want to turn to me to be that person, that’s great. But it is so important because it’s not taboo. It’s just the way life is, as it should be. Absolutely no shame around it.”
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Discussing life, food and the body until it’s normal
For the water polo star, it’s not just the topic of menstruation that needs demystifying with a dash of “normal”.
Food and body positivity are other subjects she feels often get glamourised when, in fact, in her experience, they are just normal functioning parts of being an athlete. Helping people understand that is also something she is particularly committed to.
“These ‘what do you eat in a day’ kind of videos, I hate those, and I think they’re toxic online, but it’s what’s viral. And it’s impressionable. You’ve got young eyes looking at that, or even old eyes looking at that, comparing themselves, but every single human is different.
“I think it’s taken me in a sport of other females where everything is just so normalised to understand that that [food] is actually what’s required. And the fact that other people don’t have that understanding, and I’ve got that through sport, is crazy.”
She continues: “You also get other athletes that are like, ‘Your body can be any size,’ which is amazing as well. But why are we drawing attention to it? Like it doesn’t even matter. I think the body positivity videos are also amazing, and they’re doing amazing things in their own right. But I think my content steers away from that because I don’t even feel the need to address it.
“I just think that even gets people just overthinking their bodies and food and things,” Kearns adds.
It checks out, then, with her important messages, her broader mission, and authentic delivery, that the Olympic medallist’s biggest audience before young girls is parents.
And while the art of social media is ultimately entertainment for Kearns as much as it is for the people watching, there is a definite sense of pride in the dialogue she has been able to create with her followers.
“I get a lot of messages from the mums being like, ‘my daughter or son doesn’t have social media, but they watch you through my phone. I love what you and I think you’re just a great role model‘. And it’s cool. I mean, the mums are the ones that put the kids into the sport or buy the tickets and buy the merch and things like that.
“I love them and they’re always wanting to know more and learn more. And they ask a lot of questions. So, I feel like it’s a two-way relationship. I do really, really value them,” she says, smiling.
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Tilly Kearns: “It was do or die”
All followers of Kearns were ultimately rewarded with a content feast when the Australian booked her ticket to Paris.
An intimate video of Kearns sharing the moment she got the phone call confirming she was in the squad was then followed by a kaleidoscope of behind-the-scenes clips of the day-to-day life as an Olympian at the Games.
Among them was the viral video she captured of Fijian Olympians singing in the Olympic Village that made headlines worldwide. And, somewhat unforgettably for Kearns, also on video was the moment she spotted her US boyfriend in the crowd ahead of the Olympic final after he flew 22 hours in one day to surprise her.
“Even my parents booked a flight home before the gold medal game because they didn’t expect us to get there,” she shares, laughing.
To top it all, Kearns and the Stingers delivered Australia a silver medal in the final – the women’s team’s first since London 2012, where they took home bronze.
In the aftermath of the final, where the Australians lost 11-10 to Spain, the heartache at having missed out on the chance to go one better was plain, but a year on, Kearns beams with pride at the team he had achieved.
“The six months leading up to the Olympics were maybe one of the hardest periods of my life,“ Kearns says candidly. “And I think every one of my teammates can agree with that, because we got a new coach in, and we pretty much just top-down wiped everything and started again with a new coach.”
Led by Rebecca ‘Bec’ Rippon, a former Stinger and Olympic bronze medallist, the squad went back to basics, and every detail was challenged.
“Training was just the start of it,” Kearns explains. “That’s almost the easy part, but it was just meetings upon meetings upon meetings, all different strategies of staying in the moment, what to expect, communicating, being vulnerable with being brave, trusting, like, there was a meeting for everything, there were 10 meetings for everything.
“It was talking about it, and then talking about it again and again and implementing it and then reviewing how we’re implementing it. It was just a never-ending process.
“But, I mean, we committed to it and we knew it was do or die.”
On Australia’s chances at 2025 World Aquatics Champs: ‘We’re not the underdogs anymore’
With Paris now in the rear-view mirror, the Stingers’ attention now turns to the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, where they will look to back up their hard-fought momentum win at the Games in France.
While Kearns admits the Aussies may have been a bit of a surprise package at the Olympics, they know they won’t be at the OCBC Aquatic Centre, and much of their preparations have centred around that reality.
“We’re not going in as the underdogs anymore. We have something to prove, and we have a silver medal to keep, you know, to prove that we got that. And now that we’re at the top of the podium, hopefully, we can stay there.”
With two Olympics under her belt and, what will now be a fourth turn at Worlds, Kearns, somewhat remarkably given her age, will be one of the natural leaders of the group. That actuality is something she says she’s recently been reflecting on. And though it might feel a little strange, it’s something she’s leaning into.
Having previously known a top-down culture where older players “earned the right to be mean to the younger girls”, she’s keen to make sure such behaviours don’t repeat themselves. And if that means she has to step up, it’s something she’s ready to embrace.
“I’m using it to kind of be an older person in my own right and be a leader and lead with empathy first and foremost. That’s like my number one value.
“I want to hold high, but also taking some things and spinning it my own way.”
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Could LA28 mark a return to the Coliseum for alumna Tilly Kearns?
As for life after Singapore, Kearns admits it will likely be, once again, on a different continent from her native Australia.
Having bravely taken the plunge at age 18 to pursue water polo in the United States at the University of Southern California, and spent seven years there on and off between Olympic Games, she’s now looking at a future in Europe in the professional leagues.
The Australian doesn’t yet know where she will land with negotiations quietly bubbling away as she prepares for big business with the Stingers, but there is little doubt what the further sacrifice would be for.
In three years’ time, the Olympics will arrive in Los Angeles, and the opportunity to take centre stage at a place she knows all too well is too big a dream for Kearns to ignore.
“LA is like my second home at this point,” the Australian says about the prospect of competing at a third Olympics in the US. “Especially the Opening Ceremony at the Coliseum, which was my Saturday playground at all the football games at USC. It’s like a full circle moment.”
