Elle Armit

Elle Armit's water polo journey began when she was 10 years old. She was introduced to a modified version of water polo called 'Flippaball' by her primary school and from then on, she was hooked.

She joined Townsville Water Polo club as a junior, then began her Australian national league water polo career with the Queensland Breakers in Brisbane. Following this, in 2013 Elle made her senior national team debut for the Aussie Stingers.

Considering herself more of a water than a land baby, Elle spent time honing her craft in both the Spanish and Italian leagues, using her worldly knowledge to improve her status in the Aussie Stingers.

Elle has been in the national team for several years but made plenty of outsiders sit up and take notice after scoring four goals in the 10-7 win over the USA in the group stage finals of the 2017 FINA World League. She then went on to win a medal at the World Championships and World University games for Australia.

Elle made her Olympic debut at the delayed Tokyo 2020 Games with a strong opening group stage of the Games. The Stingers won three of their four matches to finish the group stage tied for first on points. This set up a quarter-final tie against the ROC, where despite Elle scoring her first goal of the tournament, Australia was narrowly defeated 9-8.

Elle and the squad finished the Games with consecutive victories against Canada and the Netherlands to earn fifth place overall.

In 2023, Elle returned to her roots and helped guide the Griffith University Queensland Thunder to a bronze medal in the Australian Water Polo League.

That year she was among Australia’s scorers at the World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, where the Stingers finished fourth. After a tight 12-10 loss to Spain in the semi-finals, the Stingers lost the third-place play-off to Italy 16-14.

At the Paris 2024 Olympics Elle and the Stingers became the most successful Australian water polo team ever at an overseas Olympic Games.

Their silver medal performance was close to being gold, going down 11-9 to world number one Spain in the gold medal match.

They got there with an undefeated run in the group matches against the Netherlands, Hungary, China and Canada with two of those wins coming via penalty shootout. They took out Greece in the quarter-finals and world powerhouse the USA in the semis in another penalty shootout.

Away from the pool, Elle is a qualified high school teacher, specialising in PDHPE, English and religion.