Intermediate Water Polo North Island Champs
It's been a massive term of water polo for our Rosmini Blue team and our boys were all fired up for their final tournament of this year, the Intermediate North Island Champs.
Again, our team had a tough draw in a pool of 4 teams - all other North Harbour teams being in pools of 3 teams. Thursday night saw us up against St Cuthbert's Blue (our scrimmage partners in the lead up to AIMS and this tournament). The girls gave our boys a bit of a scare in the first quarter and caught them off guard, which was quickly rectified from the second quarter onwards. Our boys finished strongly with a 12-3 win.
Our next game saw us up against St Peter's Gold, which was a must-win game if we were to make the top 8. Unfortunately our goals didn't land (we put up at least 6 shots that hit the crossbar or fell agonisingly short) and our boys went down 6-8 in what was a very physical and frustrating game.
Our final pool game against St Kentigern's Boys A was a thrilling first half with our boys shutting down St Kent's #2 signature backhand shot much to his frustration, leaving us level at 2-2 at the end of the first half. Again, momentary lapses cost our boys and St Kent's capitalised, putting on 4 goals in the 3rd, which our boys couldn't recover from. We went down 2-8 leaving us in the bottom half of the tournament draw.
Our final pool games saw us up against our North Harbour foes MBIS 8A1 first up, going down 2-3, but our boys finished with two strong wins against Ponsonby Sharks, 6-1; and Auckland Normal Intermediate, 6-3.
With the St Cuthbert's result carried over, our Rosmini Blue team finished 9th overall, topping the bottom of the pool, with the best goal difference pipping Auckland Normal Intermediate and MBIS 8A finishing 10th and 11th respectively. Not the finish our team was after, but hopefully some good learnings can be taken from these games so our boys can finish Term 4 A grade on a high.
Massive thanks again to our awesome coaching ensemble, Mathew Mihaljevich and Rosmini Old Boys, Ross McFadzean and Zachariah Stewart for giving up their time over the past few weeks in the lead up to this tournament and over this weekend.
Patricia Khan
