Our August Water Polo Club News is out! - August 1, 2019

Welcome to another edition of our monthly Water Polo Club News.  The frenetic activity of the last few months has calmed down as clubs relax into the summer holidays.  In this edition we look enviously at those lucky clubs with access to outdoor pools in the hot weather.  We also pick up other activity in clubs during the month of July.  

Otter Swimming & Water Polo club celebrated it’s 150th birthday in July.  To commemorate this momentous milestone the club hosted a huge masters swimming gala and a series of water polo matches at the London Aquatic Centre.

Otter Water Polo – 150 years old

City of Sheffield hosted a very successful Development Water Polo Tournament this month with 12 teams competing from across the country.  In all 60 matches were played.  Radcliffe were the winners of the Cup with Birmingham coming in second and Chester Romans third.  The Plate competition was won by Grantham, with Chester Saxons second and Watford third.  The event also featured an exhibition match for 2010 and under, some playing their first ever competitive matches.  Thanks to Sheffield for providing such a fantastic opportunity for youngsters to develop in the sport.

Sheffield Water Polo Development Tournament in full swing

Radcliffe Sheffield Development Cup winners

Cheltenham hosted a Junior Water Polo Tournament for players born in 2005 and under.  Ten teams competed.

Congratulations to Devonport who came first with Cheltenham runners up.

Cheltenham Tournament

Great to see that Worthing sent a young senior team to participate in a ten team ‘mini polo’ competition in Lviv, Ukraine.  The invitation to take part came from Markiyan Polovyi, who has trained and played with the club’s senior squad on numerous occasions for a number of years.  The average age for the players was just 19 which was by far the youngest in the tournament.  Matches were played in an outdoor pool in front of good crowds.  Teams had travelled from parts of Ukraine as well as Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus.  A fantastic opportunity for the team to take part in a very competitive event and to experience playing water polo abroad.  

Worthing Water Polo squad In Ukraine

As the temperature has climbed we have been feeling rather jealous of those clubs which have been able to cool down with training sessions in outdoor pools.  We showcase a few such lucky clubs below.

Brockwell Lido

Faversham Ladies at Hythe Aqua

Tooting Bec Lido

City of Sheffield cooling off at Hathersage

Congratulations to outstanding scholar athlete Izzy Dean on graduating with a First Class Degree in Law at Bristol University.  Whilst studying hard Izzy has played water polo for her university, competed in the National League for Otter and represented England & GBR.  Amazing – well done!

Izzy Dean

Finally this month, we are delighted to see 14 new assistant coach trainees working towards the assistant coach qualification under the tutelage of Tim Kendall and Simon Wooley (hosted by Croydon Amphibians).  Great to see the continued enthusiasm for developing the sport.  Good luck all!

Assistant Coach Trainees

We hope you find this report of interest.  We aim to showcase what has been going on in English Water Polo clubs over the last month and flag up forthcoming events.

If you have any news that you would like to share about your club for next month’s newsletter please contact me at ah@waterpoloengland.org

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.