By Jaspreet G, Year 11

On Friday 22nd March, the U18 Waterpolo team travelled down to Liverpool Aquatics Centre to play in the finals of the U18 ESSA Waterpolo team. Our team consisted of a mixed year group from players ranging from Year 9 to Year 12. On Friday morning, we promptly left school at 9:00am and began our four and half journey to Liverpool Aquatics Centre. Once we had arrived, we warmed up and were ready to play our first match against Alleyn’s. We played very well and warmed up nicely into the tournament, securing a 14-2 win. We played our next match against Kesteven & Grantham school (score of 11-1 to us) and Highgate (9-1 to us). These matches proved to be tougher, however we played well as a team and kept our heads high, allowing us to win both matches and advance to the finals against Bolton.

We played 2 halves of 6 minutes against Bolton. In the first 3 minutes, we advanced with a 3-1 head start with beautiful goals from Evie, Zara and Zoe. As the match progressed, we ended the first half with a respectable 3-3. We knew that we had to start the second half of the match, the same way as we did the first – aggressive and strong as a team. After Jaspreet won the swim off in the second half, we led with confidence into the final 6 minutes of the match. Although there were a few mistakes within the team, we kept our morale high and kept supporting each other throughout the match. With great defence from Manpreet and Emily, and outstanding goal keeping from Iskra, we continued in the half. With another 2 goals from our team, by Captain Zara and Vice-Captain Zoe, the score had become 5-7 to Bolton. Unfortunately, this was the final outcome of the match. Despite this loss, we managed to keep our heads held high as we knew that this team will continue to train and be ready for next year’s tournament.

Although there was some disappointment, we were very proud of where we got. Not only are we all playing one, two or four year groups above ours, but we managed to achieve 2nd place from all the schools in England. We will proceed to the final round next year with the exact same team and hopefully, bring back the gold.