This year saw Kingswood College return to the Jason Murray U14 Water Polo tournament, hosted by Selborne College in East London over the weekend of 8-10 February. This is a popular event on the U14 Water Polo circuit, particularly in and around the Eastern Cape. As it co-ed tournament, Kingswood once again entered teams into both the boys’ and girls’ sections.
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It was the Kingswood girls’ team, though, who impressed from the onset with a convincing 3-1 win against Collegiate. Kingswood then went on to beat the Clarendon B and Stirling sides to eventually top their pool. This signalled their progression to the play-off stages where they came up against Merrifield whom they ended up beating 10-0 in commanding fashion.
In the semi-finals, the Kingswood girls came up against DSG, their rivals from Makhanda (Grahamstown). From start to finish, Kingswood seemed to be in control, and eventually were the victors with a score-line of 3-1.
This meant that the Kingswood team found themselves in the finals of the Jason Murray Tournament against a formidable Clarendon A team. After giving away two soft goals in the first few minutes, Kingswood then staged a tenacious and spirited comeback to bring the score to 2-3 down, going into the final chukka. However, Clarendon managed to score again to take the match out of Kingswood’s reach, winning 2-4.
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Despite falling at the last hurdle, the Kingswood side were impressive throughout the tournament, both in and out of the water. Kingswood won the ‘Team with the best spirit’ award and in Tricia Vassiliou and Ophola Bulane, they won the ‘Best defender’ and ‘Best goalkeeper’ individual awards. A great effort by this Kingswood U14 Girls’ water polo team, as they gear up towards their next competition where they will take part in the Dave Pitcairn Cup host by Reddam House in Cape Town this next weekend.
