SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — It takes a particular and peculiar sort of joke for the punchline to be "and then I played for Italy at the U18 European Championships," but for UC Santa Barbara freshman Marta Maninetti, it is no laughing matter. At least, not anymore.
 
"How it came to be is kind of funny because the summer of my junior year, I was going to Italy. My family is from Italy, so we go every summer," she explains. "However, my club coach at the time told me that if I wanted to leave for a week, I had to train while I was on vacation, so I looked around for teams and saw that Brescia had a team, which is where my family's from, and so I asked them if I could train with them while I was there. I went to a few practices and stuff, and it was super fun. They got to see me play. It started off as a joke, really, the coach is like, 'you know, you should come back, this could be fun, we'd love to have you on the team.' And I was like, 'that could be fun, ha ha,' you know."
 
A couple of phone calls later, nobody was laughing and Maninetti was getting on a plane. She graduated early from Miramonte High School, went back to Europe and from December 2024 to September of 2025, played semi-professionally with the Leonesse of AN Brescia, a club based about an hour east of Milan. After a strong season, her last stop before returning stateside to join the Gauchos was in Malta, where she played every match and scored eight goals to help Italy to a fourth-place finish at the U18 European Water Polo Championship.
 
"Italy, it was unfathomable, almost," Maninetti says. "I never thought I'd be playing on any national team ever. That was never even a thought in my mind when I just got invited to a training camp, not even one game."
 
That week in September marked quite an ascent for someone who, just four years prior, could hardly hold a water polo ball.
 
"I was never going to start playing water polo," Maninetti says. "I grew up being a very competitive swimmer from a very young age. My life was swim, swim, swim. I was convinced that swim was what I do."
 
So, what changed? In 2020, as Maninetti was preparing for what she calls one of her "biggest meets ever," the COVID-19 Pandemic locked everything down. The meet was cancelled, and the best Maninetti could do to practice was swimming in the open water of the San Francisco Bay, but with nothing to train for, she says her competitive drive started to burn her out.
 
"As time went on, being a very competitive person, it was hard for me, especially as a 12, 13-year-old, training that hard every single day and never being able to compete and feel like the work I'm putting in paid off," she explains. "I started burning out a little bit in middle school when I was swimming."
 
An avid runner as well, Maninetti had planned to alleviate the burnout by swapping swimming for cross country, until one of her swim teammates convinced her to change course at the last minute. Drawn by the promise of getting to stay in the water, Maninetti picked up a water polo ball for the first time as a high school freshman.
 
"I absolutely loved it," she says. "I learned how to play, didn't even know how to hold a ball at the start of the season, and then ended up getting bumped up to varsity and got to start on varsity as soon as I got bumped up, which was a great experience. I got to play my first CIF North Coast Section Championship and it was amazing."
 
Despite her CIF run with Berkeley High, swimming remained Maninetti's first love, though the thought of returning to water polo continued to rattle around in the back of her head. A slight change of scenery finally got her hooked on the sport full time. Before her sophomore year of high school, Maninetti and her family moved to the water polo hotbed that is Moraga, and Maninetti transferred to Miramonte, where the Matadors would go on to win back-to-back CIF North Coast Section and State Championships in her first two seasons. Maninetti played an important albeit limited role off the bench in those championship seasons, not that that took any shine off of things.
 
"It was one of the best experiences ever," Maninetti says, "Being there helps so much because you're just training with the best of the best, and that team, I think that's the most grateful team I've ever been on because just the work and the love for the sport all those girls put in made me want to get better and put in the work … My senior year, I was starting, I got to be a big part of the team again and just an overall great experience."
 
But for all of the success she had with her high school squad, the club game was another beast, and though it would ultimately lead to her Italian call-up, Maninetti struggled to get regular playing time in Moraga.
 
"Club-wise, that was always the harder part for me," she says. "I was the number-one bench warmer you will ever meet, and I think that's why going to play internationally and taking water polo so seriously was such a shock is because I went to a very competitive club my sophomore and junior year, and a lot of the girls have been playing since they were super young … Showing up, kind of being on the outskirts … the coaches already know the girls they've been developing for years. It was really hard for me to integrate myself and get a good chance to really show off my skills."
 
It may have taken a trip halfway around the world for her to finally get to show off those skills, but Maninetti knows that the work she put in as a club benchwarmer in the Bay Area helped earn her a shot at her Italian adventure.
 
"I was really grateful because my club team helped me learn good foundations and strengths and all of that stuff, and then I got to put it to work elsewhere, which is great," Maninetti says. "I went to Italy for that week, not thinking anything of it. That's when this idea was presented to me, and I just kind of ran with it. I was like, you know what, why not? I don't think I'll ever be able to do that again and I'll never be that young, without having to worry about school or this or that and just being able to play and do something that I love. I definitely wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. The rest is history."
 
Maninetti helped Brescia's U18 team to a fourth-place finish in the 2025 Italian National Finals, though her first season in Italy did not come without some culture shock.
 
"The one thing that is most different is the physicality of playing international water polo," she explains. "I think in America it's a very technical game and so, you know, if you're pushing hard, you might get that extra kick out that somewhere else they're not going to call … I'm used to playing a certain way and I had to completely turn around and change how I do things. Part of that was what helped me be seen a little bit because my strength was, I had such a good technical background that maybe some of the European teams don't hone in on as much and then they brought this fire out of me because if you're not as aggressive as they are, then you can't really do much in the water."
 
It was that combination of fire and finesse that earned Maninetti her call-up to Le Azzurine, the Italian youth team, for their summer training camp — a month-long grind of practically nothing but water polo, with the group whittled down week by week until the final 15-player roster was set for the European Championships. When Maninetti saw her name on that final 15-player list, it was a proud moment not only for her but for her entire extended family, all of whom still live in Brescia and who celebrated the moment with her.
 
"We had a big family dinner," she recalls. "It was a lot of emotions, definitely. I've always been known as the kid with the most sports drive of all maybe the nieces and nephews and grandkids, so being able to represent Italy — which is also the side of me that resonates more is my Italian side — it was a lot of pride, a lot of emotions, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. It was amazing."
 
With hugs and goodbyes taken care of (though plenty of Maninettis would be on hand to watch the games in Malta), Marta started her international career with training camp in Barcelona, which included the opportunity to compete against Spain, who would go on to win the U18 Euros in September. After a month of training, Maninetti and Italy opened their run in the competition against Türkiye, with Maninetti scoring twice in a 21-13 win. She scored again in the next match, an 18-17 penatly shootout win over Hungary, and Italy racked up an 14-11 win over the Netherlands to round out group play, the only match in which Maninetti did not score at the tournament. She was back in the goals in a big way with a hat trick in the quarterfinal win over Israel. The Italians were defeated in the semifinals despite another goal from Maninetti, and they fell again in the third-place game to Hungary, though again Maninetti scored. More importantly, the results are not what Maninetti holds onto from her experience. No, that would be the friendships she formed with her teammates, like Brescia and Italy teammate Malika Bovo, and connections with her coaches, which have her eying a return to Le Azzurine for the U20 European Championships this summer.
 
"I was so lucky to have such a great group of girls," Maninetti says, "I made so many lifelong friends there that I still talk to every single day. It was definitely a one-of-a-kind experience and I still keep in contact with my national team coaches, so I'll be going back this summer for another month of grind and hopefully I'll get picked again this summer in Portugal."
 
With the Gauchos' 2026 NCAA season first up on the horizon though, there is something else that Maninetti found while in Italy: a renewed confidence. While Miramonte High School was winning those back-to-back CIF Championships, Maninetti admits she occasionally struggled to focus on playing her game in the pursuit of just getting more time to play at all.
 
"Sometimes when you're a bench player, it's hard because you don't want to mess up and risk getting taken out, and one of the things I lost in that was my shooting," she explains. "My freshman year when I had just started playing, I had no care in the world, so I shot. It was my biggest strength, and I just loved doing it, it was everything I wanted to do was shoot, shoot, shoot, play. When everything just flip-flops and it's now the exact opposite, got this mental block when it came to shooting that it came to the point that I'd be playing four quarters of a game and I wouldn't shoot the ball once. That was really hard for me, but when I went to Italy, one thing that was really nice is I just had nothing to lose. My coaches worked really closely with me to build that confidence back up, get more comfortable shooting, find places in the pool for me where I can feel comfortable doing what I want to do. It was super helpful getting back into the right mindset, pushing myself, I thought that was super helpful."
 
Maninetti is not the only person excited to have her Italian experience on the Gauchos' side. Brazilian international Juju Amaral was one of the top playmakers in The Big West in 2025, and Bella Mady rode her experience with Canada at the 2024 U18 World Championships to a 45-goal season in 2025. UC Santa Barbara Head Coach Emma Myall knows just how much flavor some international spice can add to a squad.
 
"Obviously it's a huge advantage to have her on our team with that experience," Myall says. "It proves that the girls we have on our team are at a high level but also, it's extremely exciting because she's so young. She just got in this position and she will hopefully continue to build her role on that team. She can only go up from here, and I think that's a really big positive on her skill level because it's been what, barely a year for her training with them, and what she has become is already night and day. She has been amazing."
 
As for Maninetti, she is ready to learn what she can from the Gauchos' returners in what will be her first season of collegiate water polo.
 
"I'm really excited to be playing with a lot of older girls," she says. "There's so much you can learn from your teammates, and that's always been something I will always take advantage of. One of my best friends (Bovo), she's 15 years old and she's one of the best water polo players I know. We played together last summer and we're both playing for the same team this summer. I would ask her every day, hey, watch my shot, hey, watch my pass, give me tips on this, give me tips on that. That, for me, that's just something I love so much, is being able to turn to my teammates and be like, hey, help me out with this, and get that criticism, get that feedback."
 
Maninetti's is a mindset that in some ways makes the 18-year-old college rookie wise beyond her years, and it comes from an experience that she is quick to recommend for others.
 
"Playing internationally and getting the opportunity to go abroad definitely changed me, not just as a player but as a person. I think there's so much to learn in sports and in life, and getting to live in a completely different environment is a very special and hard but rewarding experience. My advice to anyone who would be second-guessing that kind of thing is take your chance because you don't know what's going to come out of it, I think most of the time it'll be a really positive experience."