By Alice N, U13 Water Polo Captain

On the 15th of May, the U13 water polo team travelled to Northampton School for Boys where we would compete against different schools to try and win the title of ESSA National Champions. When we got there, the first school we played was Eltham College. We won against them 8-2 moving us on to the next round. Everyone was excited to see what was to come next and all spirits were high.

After that we had to play Manchester and we won 4-2 against them which moved us on to the semi finals. For the semi finals Bolton and Alleyn’s had to play each other and whoever lost we would play for the semi finals. Bolton won so we ended up playing Alleyn’s. It was a close match and everybody from both teams were exhausted by the end but our opponents managed to score at the last second making the final score 5-2 giving them the win.

We were gutted to lose but we knew we had to push through, persevere and still play our best in the last match still to come. Our last match was against Eltham College and we were playing for third and fourth places. We rose to the challenge as a team and won 7-1 against them giving us the overall ranking of third place which we were extremely happy with, knowing we were going to take the experience away with us and work as a team to improve and come back next year to win.