Illawarra Water Polo Club, walk away Champs from JCC’s

Illawarra attended WPNSW’s Junior Country Club for the first time since the early 2000’s, and their U14’s boys team walked away with gold.

Team Manager, Jimmy Berry, recaps on the weekend:

On the weekend, we took an U14 boys team and an U14 girls team. We are a small club and this was the first junior competition that we have attended in memorable history (I believe the last time was the early 2000's). The girls played really well in the tournament, finishing 6th out of 11. Aurora MacAskill finished as the tournament's top goal scorer - 15 goals in 4 games. Despite missing the first game, as she was nominated for surf lifesaver of the year at her local surf lifesaving club.

With the boys, is where it gets very, very interesting. As the team manager, I found it quite hard to scrape a team together (we ended up with only 2 reserves). We played well on day 1 in the group stage, beating Wagga Wagga 6-3 and losing narrowly to Central Newcastle 9-7 to finish 2nd in our group - securing a spot in the quarter finals. We then beat Tamworth in the quarter final 9-7 and beat our cross-town rivals, Southern Highlands 6-2, in our preliminary final Sunday morning.

Just to add some context, we do not even have enough juniors, so we play mixed gender every week. It was only 3 and half weeks prior to the comp that we played our first junior game against another club, Southern Highlands. We played them twice in two weeks and lost both boys and girls games. So we finally got our redemption with a win, progressing to the Grand Final against the other Central Newcastle team (who had beat the Central Newcastle team we lost to on the Saturday). We also had the opportunity to train and play with the Cronulla U14B boys side over the last 3 weeks to prepare for the championships.

Although we were down 3-2 at halftime in the Grand Final, the boys played outstandingly, and with the direction of coach, Pete Rolfe, we got over the line to win 7-3 (a 5-0 second half). And that's the story of how a team with 2 reserves, no uniforms, training once a week and playing once a week against mixed gender opponents, won the NSW Junior Country Club Championships in their first tournament in 20 years. A true underdog story.

I was most impressed by their rapid improvement throughout the tournament. They learnt to play as a team, working together to become the champions they now are. I was impressed by the way they carried themselves and showed great sportsmanship throughout the tournament and representing the Illawarra region with pride.

We asked Cronulla boy’s coach Pookie about their collaborative training and games nights:

We took the Cronulla boys u14’s B team down 1 night a week for three weeks to help the players on both teams broaden their experience, playing different teams in different environments. The boys all worked extremely hard, and it yielded great results - the parents had a good time to!

Illawarra are a young capable team who are learning the game and picking it up quickly. Credit to the coaches Jimmy and Peter for their hard work and commitment to the team and the sport.

Water Polo NSW were seriously impressed by both Illawarra team’s results and how this success was achieved through hard work, dedication from both players and coaches, and inter-club collaboration. Thanks to Southern Highlands and Cronulla for playing their part in this success and supporting local clubs. What a weekend, what a result!