Ashleigh Elizabeth Johnson (born September 12, 1994) is an American water polo player of Ethnikos Piraeus team, who is considered by many[1][2][3][4] to be the best goalkeeper in the world.

She was part of the American national team that won the gold medal at the 2015 World Aquatics Championships.

[9] Chelsea graduated from Princeton a year after Ashleigh in 2018 and continues to be involved with water polo in Miami.

At Ransom Everglades, she was a four-year letter winner and starter on her school's water polo team guiding them to three consecutive state championships.

[13] She also earned All-Dade honors throughout career, Johnson was a multi-sport athlete and also competed in swimming in high school.

[13] In her first year she was named Third-Team All American, while earning Honorable Mention as a sophomore in 2014, and Second Team as a junior in 2015.

[13] Johnson finished her collegiate water polo career as Princeton’s all-time leader in saves (1,362).

[16] Her age, 21 years old, and her sub-Saharan African ancestry were highlighted by Sports Illustrated leading up to the 2016 Olympic Games.

[15] In doing so, she became just the second Princeton Tiger to win an Olympic gold medal, then return to compete for the university.

[14] From January 2018 she has been hired by the Orizzonte Catania, the most titled club in Europe in recent times.

[10]Team USA Women's Water Polo ended their Olympic season in fourth place after a 10 - 11 loss to the Netherlands.

As the only Black player and the only person from the East Coast, Johnson described that initially it was a tough transition to play on the Olympic team.

[10]Her coach encouraged her to embrace her role model status:...it really took me understanding the bigger context of not only our sport, but access to aquatics, the historical exclusion of people of color from aquatics spaces, and it took all of that to start writing a new history, start writing a new story, start opening up that pathway for the people who will follow me - the girls and boys who look like me - to gain that confidence that maybe I didn't have, that dream that I didn't have because I didn't see a lot of people who looked like me in this space.

[10]In the 2024 Olympics, she has joined with the team's "hype man," rapper Flavor Flav to raise the visibility of water polo in the Black community especially.

So talking about it and saying you do, seeing a man who’s a rapper, who’s not even part of this space get so passionate and invested in a team like ours, I think is life changing...I think that’s one of those things that breaks down a barrier.