2018 has been a successful year for the CGHS Water Polo Team. With the same young team that carried on from last year, we took on the goal of improving our placing of 8th in 2017.

 During tournament week, we drove down to Dunedin to compete at the South Island tournament. We won our final two games against Southland Girls’, and attained 5th place, an improvement on last year’s placing, a great achievement.

Throughout the year, many members of our squad were privileged to be selected to represent Canterbury. Emma Bone and Ngaio Shaw were selected to represent the Canterbury U14 Girls, while Piper Spencer and Bridget Morris were selected in the U16 Girls, and Jess Aitken in the U18 Girls team. All of these teams competed at the Pan Pacific Youth Games and National Tournament, gaining respectable placings in each competition.

Following this, Bridget was selected to train as part of the Born 2003 New Zealand Squad, which is building towards the Junior World Championships in 2023. Jess also continues to train as part of the Born 2001 New Zealand Squad, which is building towards the Junior World Championships in 2021.

We would also like to say a huge thank you to our coaches, Alex Brook for our Seniors and Dave Bone for our Juniors (also helping with Seniors). Without these two coaches, our teams wouldn’t have improved and achieved the results that we did. We would also like to say thank you to Rachelle Spencer, who took time off to come down to Dunedin and be our manager. Her commitment gave us the opportunity to compete, which we are all extremely grateful for. From the 3 Year 13 leavers, we would like to wish the future water polo players luck in their endeavours in the years to come and we look forward to hearing about your successes.

Jess Aitken - Head and Captain of Water Polo