By Manpreet G, Year 9

Early morning, on the 1st of January 2024, my waterpolo team and I headed to Barcelona to compete at the HaBaWaBa International Tournament. The team consisted of 15 of the best waterpolo players from the five Swim England Waterpolo Talent Centres across the whole of England.

Some of us players started our journey from Stansted Airport, while the remaining took the flight from Manchester. When we met as a team for the first time, there were a few familiar faces, but also many new, but we were all going to be a part of one team, the English Roses, for the next few days.

As soon as we reached Barcelona and settled in our hotel, we had a team meeting, did team building activities and prepared ourselves for the upcoming tournament. We knew this was going to be a tough competition as we were competing mainly against fully boys teams from all over Europe playing on an extremely high level. Despite being strong waterpolo players, we soon realised that we were quite an inexperienced team having only met each other the day before the Tournament.

However, match by match, our team came together and we improved immensely as a team. We started understanding each other’s game play and became a much stronger and united English Roses team. Although the results didn’t show our full strength and potential on paper, this experience has taught me and the other players a lot about ourselves. In the course of 4 days, we achieved much more than what can be seen by the eye. We learnt to be adaptive, strong minded, determined and we had each others’ backs. No matter how hard a game was, we never gave up, which showed that anything is possible when you put together like minds. We put up a strong fight against all the boys teams and it shows that with more practice and experience as a team, we are going to be a much stronger team next time.

This trip to the HaBaWaBa Tournament has offered much more than just waterpolo. It has provided me with personal growth and created new friendships with girls that are going to be my team in future ventures. I am extremely grateful for this amazing opportunity that was given to me and I look forward to seeing what the future brings for the English Roses.