Nic Porter

Interested in both soccer and swimming, at age nine Nic Porter decided to combine the two sports and began playing water polo at his school.

Throughout his high school days, Nic won four league championships in a row from 2012 to 2015 with St Andrew's Anglican College, showing promising signs early on as a talented goalkeeper.

In 2017, Nic had his first taste of international water polo, at the junior level, where he competed at the 2017 FINA Junior World Championships.

Moving to the USA for water polo while majoring in health and human sciences at the University of Southern California (USC) in 2018, Nic won the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletics Association) Division 1 Championship in his first season.

In that same year Nic joined the Aussie Sharks, making his debut at the 2018 FINA Men's Water Polo League, finishing the tournament as a silver medallist after a loss in the final against winners USA 9-6. 

Continuing with the USC Trojans in 2019 and 2020, Nic made hundreds of saves, whilst also making the NCAA All-Tournament First and Second Teams across his last two years with the university.

Post pandemic, Nic represented Australia in his first major international tournament, at the 2022 FINA World Championships.

Whilst playing for AWPL (Australian Water Polo League) team Queensland Thunder domestically, in mid-2022 Nic had the chance to play overseas, where he joined Spanish team CN Atletic-Barceloneta. In his first season with the Catalonian outfit, Nic won the Spanish Super Cup.

In 2023, Nic represented Australia at the FINA World Cup and the FINA World Championships whilst also winning a bronze medal in the LEN European Champions League, an achievement he considers to be his career highlight thus far.

In 2024, Nic competed in the FINA World Championships in Doha, playing all six games for the 11th place Sharks.

Nic has trained with Olympian and Croatian goalkeeper Marko Bijac, who was named best goalkeeper at the Rio 2016 Games.

At the Paris 2024 Olympics Nic and the Sharks recorded statement wins over defending Olympic champion Serbia, host nation France and Hungary in the group stage.

The Serbia win meant the world to Nic, whose goalkeeping kept the Serbians to just three goals for the match.

“I always knew this group had a performance like that in them and we've shown glimpses of it this Olympic cycle over the last three years,” he said post game.

“But to put a performance like that together in front of all our family and friends at the Olympic Games, I couldn't have imagined this in my wildest dreams.

“Everyone probably looked at this matchup and thought Australia's got no chance, but the boys believed and we showed it today and got the win.”

Finishing second in their group, it gave Australia a place in the men's Olympic quarter-finals for the first time since London 2012.

A penalty-shootout loss to the USA in the quarter-finals sent the Sharks into the 5th-8th classification games and they came away in 8th place, up from the team's 9th overall placing at Tokyo 2020.