When you’ve tuned into any of the ladies’s water polo matches on the Olympics—and you must, as a result of Group USA is going for a historic fourth consecutive gold medal—you’ve most likely seen a well-recognized face on the sidelines.

Or not less than, a well-recognized clock.

That’s proper—it’s Taste Flav, the founding member of the hip-hop group Public Enemy that’s identified for sporting an enormous clock round his neck. He’s now the official hype man for the group.

A rapper and actuality TV star may look like an unlikely booster for a sport that isn’t on most individuals’s radar. So how’d all of it come about? It’s all due to Maggie Steffens, the group captain, who’s been on all three of these gold-medal-winning groups. In Might, Steffens posted on Instagram asking for help for her group—or, for that matter, any different lesser-known ladies’s Olympic athletes.

“Some could not know this, however most Olympians want a 2nd (or third) job to help chasing the dream (myself included!) and most groups depend on sponsors for journey, lodging, dietary help, hire/lodging, and easily affording to dwell nowadays,” she wrote. Corporations and people already donate, and the game’s governing physique gives some funding, however “we at all times want extra assist.”

Taste Flav’s supervisor was scrolling that day, noticed the submit, and shared it with the rapper. Flav rapidly realized he may make a distinction. He commented on Steffens’s submit: “As a woman dad and supporter of all ladies’s sports activities … imma sponsor the entire group,” he wrote. “My supervisor is in contact along with your agent.”

After which he adopted via. On July 1, USA Water Polo introduced he’d signed a five-year sponsorship deal, by which he’d made a monetary contribution of an undisclosed quantity to help the athletes. He additionally pledged to look poolside not simply in Paris, however in a number of different USA Water Polo occasions all year long. And he vowed to advertise the groups on social media.

To date, he’s joined the group at follow sporting a USA Water Polo–themed clock, making an attempt his hand at treading water, passing, and taking pictures. When the ladies had been in Paris for a take a look at match in Might, he helped them get tickets to a Taylor Swift live performance. At their first match of the Video games—by which they defeated Greece 15 to six—he was there, taking selfies with first woman Jill Biden.

When you’ve tuned into any of the ladies’s water polo matches on the Olympics—and you must, as a result of Group USA is going for a historic fourth consecutive gold medal—you’ve most likely seen a well-recognized face on the sidelines.

Or not less than, a well-recognized clock.

That’s proper—it’s Taste Flav, the founding member of the hip-hop group Public Enemy that’s identified for sporting an enormous clock round his neck. He’s now the official hype man for the group.

A rapper and actuality TV star may look like an unlikely booster for a sport that isn’t on most individuals’s radar. So how’d all of it come about? It’s all due to Maggie Steffens, the group captain, who’s been on all three of these gold-medal-winning groups. In Might, Steffens posted on Instagram asking for help for her group—or, for that matter, any different lesser-known ladies’s Olympic athletes.

“Some could not know this, however most Olympians want a 2nd (or third) job to help chasing the dream (myself included!) and most groups depend on sponsors for journey, lodging, dietary help, hire/lodging, and easily affording to dwell nowadays,” she wrote. Corporations and people already donate, and the game’s governing physique gives some funding, however “we at all times want extra assist.”

Taste Flav’s supervisor was scrolling that day, noticed the submit, and shared it with the rapper. Flav rapidly realized he may make a distinction. He commented on Steffens’s submit: “As a woman dad and supporter of all ladies’s sports activities … imma sponsor the entire group,” he wrote. “My supervisor is in contact along with your agent.”

After which he adopted via. On July 1, USA Water Polo introduced he’d signed a five-year sponsorship deal, by which he’d made a monetary contribution of an undisclosed quantity to help the athletes. He additionally pledged to look poolside not simply in Paris, however in a number of different USA Water Polo occasions all year long. And he vowed to advertise the groups on social media.

To date, he’s joined the group at follow sporting a USA Water Polo–themed clock, making an attempt his hand at treading water, passing, and taking pictures. When the ladies had been in Paris for a take a look at match in Might, he helped them get tickets to a Taylor Swift live performance. At their first match of the Video games—by which they defeated Greece 15 to six—he was there, taking selfies with first woman Jill Biden.