On Sunday 19th November our Water Polo B team had an early start leaving Dunedin at 6 am to travel down to Invercargill for an invitational tournament.

We were off to play against some junior under 15 teams who we knew would be stiff competition. Our teams are used to playing in the local league. The boys all embraced the challenge displaying great courage and perseverance.

The first match against Southland Water Polo’s Juniors (under 15) was a big wake-up call with SWP dominating the match leading to a 14-1 defeat. Straight on the back of that match, we played a much stronger game winning 15-2.

An hour’s break gave us time to recover and we were back in the water, this time for a much tighter match where we played with better structure and defence and benefited from some great saves by Oli Jamieson. However, we eventually fell foul to the much more experienced team Southland Water Polo team by 9- 3.

The final match of the day was against James Hargest College. Neo scored a beautiful first goal set up by Blake, this coupled with some great saves by Oli saw us take the lead. However, a few missed opportunities and fatigue set in, and in the end JHC clinched victory.

It was a fantastic day's learning for this up-and-coming team who are currently topping the table in the local Dunedin competition, having won the Term 1 trophy and having only lost one match in Term 4. Hopefully, they are inspired by this opportunity to have some stronger opposition and leave with a determination to train harder and continue to improve.

MVP was awarded to Neo Salomonsson whose constant work and superior swimming skills saw him drive the ball to where it needed to be on some crucial occasions, enabling him to score several times.

The team were:

Blake Schofield
Neo Salomonsson
Dade Tredoux
Luca Mirosa
Henry Hodgson
Robbie Nichol
Oliver Jamieson
Sam Hobbs
Caleb Wayne

Our thanks go to Mr Paul Wagner, our fantastic coach from Otago Water Polo who gave up his whole Sunday to accompany the boys. Mr Wagner has, yet again been a fantastic coach in Term 1 and 4 this year and we wouldn’t be without him.