News

Penguin Masters swimmer Karen Brown took bronze in the 50-54yrs 50m backstroke at the British Gas ASA Masters Swimming Championships at Ponds Forge Sheffield on Friday 23 October 2009.

A long standing member of Penguin, Karen's success is all the more sweet as she's only just getting back into competition after a tough year out of the water.

The new British Water Polo League unveiled their logo, designed by Penguin's Paul Skerm, at their inaugural AGM last week. Paul's design was chosen in a competition to find a new brand identity for the BWPL.

According to the league website "Paul was one of numerous polo friends who responded to the challenge of designing something that would be both appropriate and also adaptable for display in anything from websites (the new BWPL website will be launched soon) and shirts to banners and other promotional items. The quality of entry was high, making the final choice extremely difficult for members of the league’s shadow board."

Well done Skermie!

The British Water Polo League is the result of a merger of the men’s National Water Polo League and the National Women’s Water Polo League. The new organisation will see clubs playing under a new divisional structure from 2011.

On Saturday 19 November, Penguin Rockhoppers travelled to Manchester for two Championship 3 matches. The first game against Southampton started well, with player-coach Nora Benko kicking things off with two goals to take the lead for Penguin. However, Southampton weren’t going to let go easily and fought back to 2-1 at the end of the first quarter. They took the lead in the second quarter and from then on their strength in both attack and defence pushed us hard. While we kept taking shots, we couldn’t keep up in terms of goals, and going into the last quarter we trailed 6-10. A final team talk kept us focussed and the classic surfer’s lob did its job, first in an attack and then in a man up from the left wing, less than a minute later. Despite our efforts the final score was 10-12 to Southampton asnd, while it was disappointing to not seal the victory from the early lead, coach Nora praised our persistence and determination.

We anticipated that our second game against ICENI would be an altogether different affair, having seen their inexperienced team already suffer heavy defeats against Polytechnic and Sunderland. Nora chose to sit out and rest her injury, which meant the remaining girls had a lot of pool time ahead of them. It also gave less experienced players Zoe Grainge and Jai Mai Lee, the chance to prove themselves.

The match started just as we’d hoped with five goals in the first quarter from four different players including Laura Hues, Vicky Miller and Emma Stapleton. The second quarter saw ICENI scrape a goal back, although two more from Laura and Julia Hornig kept us comfortably in the lead. With the half time score at 7-1, we knew we needed to maintain our standard of play despite the weaker opposition. Throughout the remaining two quarters, the Rockhoppers showed lots of creative play in a variety of man up situations, breaks and set ups, with further goals from Vicky, Laura, Julia and Emma. The whistle blew with the score at 15-2, a good win for us against a team who will undoubtedly grow in strength in the future.

The St Paul's School pool will be closed from 6-23 August so there will be no training sessions there during this period.

Our women's second team played their first games in Division 2 of the British League in Grantham last weekend.  Formed of both seasoned Penguin players, players who have deservedly been promoted from the 3rd team, and new players, the Penguin Kings started their season with matches against strong opposition; Manchester C, Solihull and Hucknall.

Whilst we came away without a win, the games were spiritedly contested and we showed glimpses of our true potential, including goals scored by six different players over the weekend. Lily Woodroof was our top goalscorer. We'll be looking to convert this potential into reality during the rest of the National League season.

Continuing a summer of successes for Penguins swimmers in open water events, women's water polo player Julia Petchey competed in the British Gas National ASA 3k Open Water Championships on Sunday 18th July near Norwich.

Finishing in a time of 51.37 Julia was 6th fastest female overall and came 3rd in her age group (25-29 years), taking the bronze medal.

These results also fed into the County Championships and the ASA Regional Championships. Julia's time secured her 1st place in both, making her the Herts County Champion and the ASA East Region Champion.

The Masters Xmas meal will be on Saturday 12 December at The Queen's Head in Brook Green, Hammersmith. Contact Stu Bell to book your place.

Our men's second team will meet local rivals Otter in the second round of the Referees Cup in match to be played before 30th August 2010.