From Sunday to Wednesday last week, our Senior A Water-Polo team competed at the South Islands Secondary Schools' Waterpolo Tournament in Christchurch.

Water-Polo is a physically demanding sport, and it requires a high level of fitness to even last one five minute quarter in the pool. Despite this, it is a truly amazing sport and unlike anything else. It also has a great atmosphere, lots of laughs, traditions and most of all fun, and I highly recommend it to any girls to sign up, and give it a go!

This year, our senior A tournament team was composed of only four seniors, and the rest were only Year 9 and Year 10! This is fantastic for the sport, as we often struggle to find new players each year. It is truly refreshing to see how many new girls to the school are playing water-polo, and it really makes myself and the rest of my fellow players ecstatic.

At the SISS tournament this year, due to an odd draw, we ended up in the bottom pool. At first we were disheartened, as we had to play at Rangi Ruru pool (an outdoor pool at Rangi Ruru Girls’ School), rather than Jellie Park. However, when we got into it, we had a load of fun. We were playing teams more of our calibre, and we were winning! We ended up placing ninth, and although it isn’t what we hoped for coming into the tournament, we weren’t disappointed. We grew as a team at this tournament, and I can confidently say that we are all now very close, and even a week on from the tournament we have all improved so much.

I am immensely proud of all the girls in my team for all of their hard work leading up to and at the tournament, and I am so excited to go away with you all again! And I would also like to thank on behalf of our team our teacher in charge, Mrs Chapman, who made this trip possible, and for all of the hard work she puts into making our sport happen (and for dealing with our really bad singing for over 10 hours). A special mention also goes out to our coach, Rhys, who is an awesome guy for giving up his time for the past two (going on three) years to train and coach us.

Look out for us next year, as we will be back better than ever and hopefully return with some shiny medals!