We are the Champions!!

The time has finally come for the SUWPC’s women to play their last match of the season determining if they won the league! They set off on the journey to Surrey Sports Park with those qualified enough driving the 2-hour journey, and after plenty karaoke we arrived. With it being Mother’s Day, the girls had lots of support from their families coming to watch in addition to our boys’ team who were also playing surrey later that day. Although the girls were feeling confident, there were some nerves as one car, containing coach Alex and some of the girls starting lineup had yet to arrive. Thankfully, the girls made a dramatic last-minute entrance on too pool side and jumped in intime for the swim off.

Surrey started off strong (taking us by surprise after our last match against them) winning the swim off and then quickly forming an attack which was saved by Antonia. Despite having played a lot of polo over the weekend Rhia was still raring to go, getting one of the Surrey girls kicked out for a penalty. Jess was chosen to take it and despite a powerful shot, hit the cross bar as Surrey counter and earned their own penalty, shockingly off of Magill, and early indication of some interesting referee calls. The shot was easily saved by Antonia, but now after 3 mins of continued back and forth and many saves, they scored the first goal, however, do not fret cause not even 20 seconds later our very own Jess Grace scored us our first goal setting the tone for many more to come. Obviously wanting to make an impact on the score sheet in her last official match, Lucia scored our second goal of the match and then 15s later got herself excluded. Not discouraged by the use of shot clocks and wanting to give Surrey a fighting chance we kept the first quarter pretty close but with 2 minutes left, Perks, Magill and Ratledge scored us 4 more goals ending the quarter at 6-2.

After a quick team talk and reminding ourselves how to defend the second quarter begins and within the first minute Magill scores for the second time, keen to get the score difference up and Lottie scores for the third! That’s our President and Captain for ya. Wanting to keep things interesting, Rhia got one of the Surrey members wrapped and went on to score 3 times! This was turning out to be an even fuller match sheet than the last time we played Surrey, with the girls scoring goals almost every 30s. This quarter had some incredible defending by everyone, Iris making an epic block and saves by our goalie as well as some excellent arc set ups, drives and counters by Meg who was keen to replicate her 3 goals from the last match. These girls showed so much confidence and improvement from the start of the year! Of course, we couldn’t have a game without Lottie getting a major and with some questionable tactics and table skills from the Surrey team we finished the second quarter at 13-4.

Now starting the third quarter with Izzy realising she is going to have to get into the water at some point and reminding Katie in the words of Alex that “water polo isn’t about drowning people” (Surrey were trying their best) the girls were ready for action. Starting off with a bang with both teams getting exclusions and Rhia obviously on a roll getting yet another Surrey member wrapped. It was at this point Lottie started to make requests to Rhia about which players to get excluded next. The sheet was then dominated by Magill who scored 3 successive goals and Surrey obviously tired of getting wrapped by Rhia, sent Rhia into her own timeout. Shout out to our fresher Eleanna who got her first goal ever in BUCS (whilst being a fresher!) and our President who then goes on to score 3 more times in a minute and 6 times overall in the quarter, showing Surrey how it should be done. 22-4.

Beginning of the final quarter, Surrey win yet again another swim off but despite their great efforts they are unable to score against our fantastic goalie for the whole quarter. Taking a tactical time out in the middle of the game making sure that all our graduates could be in the pool for the final minutes of the game. Magill and Lottie scoring yet again however we also have some new faces joining the score board! Miss Neve Rowland being another fresher who scored her first BUCS goal! It was obviously a day for new goal scorers, so as the girls now feeling cozy with their lead of 22 goals, a tactic was decided to try and get Antonia her first goal of the year as it was her last match. Originally starting with 7 girls on 6, Lottie sitting back at halfway to defend the goal if needed, Antonia made a big display of swimming into pit and then proceeding to get drowned. She has clearly forgotten how to play out field after being in goal so long (in her defence Surrey were desperate to not let her score with 2 girls both trying to push her under the water but forgetting she was a goalie with rather good eggbeater). With the last few minutes left in the game, Miss Perks worked her magic and earned a penalty for Soton, which Antonia took and easily scored making our final score 28-4.

With our amazing Captain who bought us all medals and our President blowing up our trophy we all jumped into the pool for photos and to begin celebrating!! We didn’t even get out of the changing rooms before the drinks were handed out with our Social Sec Katie Smith giving us all shower beverages. Of course, after we headed to the student bar with the Surrey team for a pint and then it was off back home to Southampton, however our amazing social Sec had other ideas for her car, obviously wanting to party with the best of the best she navigated herself and 3 unsuspecting victims into Central London. With the journey back over (some longer than others) we ended up at Antonia’s for prosecco and yes you guessed it more karaoke!!!

WELL DONE GIRLS, WE DID IT!!!!!!!!

Love from Lottie: The point at which this report will be posted, the girls have also been confirmed to be moving up a league to join the top teams in the South in the Premiership, the highest level of university water polo!! This is an amazing feat that has never been achieved before by the club and is accreditation to the hard work and commitment from all our fabulous girls who have worked incredibly hard to take us to the top of the league and give us this opportunity. Despite all this amazing news, this does also make this match the last official match for all our graduates this year, so as Captain I would like to say a massive thank you on behalf of the whole team to Katie Magill, Antonia Neild, Lucia Ciardo, Jess Grace, Meg Harvey, Claudia Ellis-Bone, Molly Slade, Lara Philpott, Ruby Lunn. It won’t be the same without you!

Man of the match: All our graduates who played fabulously in their last match of the year! Especially Magill and Neild without who we never would’ve won the league. You will all be sorely missed next year! (Shoutout to our 2 freshers who also scored their first goals of the year)

Dick of the day: The questionable Surrey tabling and reffing which left both teams and our own national level ref stumped

Goals/Majors:

Antonia Neild 1/0

Jess Grace 1/2

Eleanna Fairhurst 1/0

Katie Smith 0/0

Rhia Perks 6/1

Katie Magill 9/1

Lucia Ciardo 1/1

Izzy Saunders 0/0

Lottie Ratledge 4/1

Iris Bugnar 0/0