World’s largest water polo event comes to town
JOBURG – Local schools pay hos to 1 700 water polo payers at the world's largest water polo schools event.
Local schools played host to a sensational Schools Water Polo South Africa National Tournament 2019, which is the largest schools water polo tournament in the world.
While the weather was mostly rainy between 7 and 11 December, 5 000 spectators still turned up at nine schools in Joburg, including St Stithians College, Crawford College Lonehill, St David’s Marist Inanda, Reddam House Helderfontein, Steyn City Aquatic Centre, Wahoo Aquatics Centre and Parktown Boys’ High School ,to cheer local players on.
The tournament featured a whopping 1 700 players from U14 to U19 level in 121 teams playing 455 matches. The event featured teams from every province as well as a national team from Zimbabwe.
The atmosphere was even brighter and cheering louder than usual with central Gauteng teams performing brilliantly and the province winning the overall trophy, wrestling it from Western Province which won it the five previous times.
“We had a fantastic organising team,” said Jacinta Tshidzumba, member of the event’s organising committee.
“With load-shedding and rain, we had unusual conditions and it felt like everything that could go wrong did. But we persevered and all games were played.”
Some of the pools were indoors and there were no games cancelled due to lightning at the outside pools.
So the youngsters played on in the rain and ensured the tournament was a success.
“A highlight for me was that so many water polo players from around the country came to Joburg and competed in good spirits.”
Central Gauteng won the overall tournament after its teams won the U14 boys and girls, U15 girls, U16 girls and U19 girls’ divisions.
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