Surprise! USA water polo team gets tickets to see the Eras Tour in Paris from Taylor Swift

A cold email with a big wish led to a once-in-a-lifetime night for 23 members of the U.S. women’s water polo team.

“I don’t know how I’m going to top this,” says Ally Beck over Zoom. Beck, the operational manager, reached out to Taylor Swift’s team earlier this year hoping to surprise her athletes with tickets to the Eras Tour.

“We’ve been preparing for the Olympics and got invited by France to do a test event in Paris,” Beck says. When she looked for activities for the team to do, she noticed Swift would kick off the second year of her record-breaking tour in the French capital city. So she e-mailed the singer’s team.

Weeks went by and while Beck was boarding the plane from Los Angeles to France, she got a reply that stopped her in her tracks.

“The audible squeal that came out of me on the plane,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, everyone.'”
Beck waited until the Wednesday before the concert to tell the team.

You can see the reaction in the video above.

“The girls just lost it,” Beck says. “And from there, it was like, ‘What are we going to wear?’ We were squealing down the hallway.”

‘There is no amount of times to say thank you’

On Friday, 15 water polo athletes and eight staff members piled into the VIP floor section dubbed the “Red” lounge. Two of the biggest Swifties on the team are Denise Mammolito, the utility outside shooter, and center Ava Johnson. Mammolito’s first concert was Swift’s second era: “Fearless.”

The Eras Tour added to an already amazing week for the team, after rapper Flavor Flav said he would help financially support the team’s trip to the summer games in Paris.

Team captain Maggie Steffens took to Instagram with an inspirational post that read in part: “Some may not know this, but most Olympians need a 2nd (or 3rd) job to support chasing the dream (myself included!) and most teams rely on sponsors for travel, accommodations, nutritional support, rent/lodging, and simply affording to live in this day and age. Especially female sports and female athletes.”