Bright future for water polo team

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This article was published 28/12/2015 (3627 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Students at École Viscount Alexander have jumped in the deep end of a new sports program.

Athletes at the Grade 5 to 8 school in Fort Garry recently wrapped up their debut season of water polo — the first at the school in about eight years.

Managed by teacher Kim Peppler and coached by Vincent Massey Collegiate (VMC) alumnus Brenden Pizey-Allen, as well as assistant coaches Simon Vautrin and Karim Sidhom (both Grade 12 students at VMC), the team had an amazing season of learning and growing as stronger swimmers and water polo players.

“It blew me away how many kids came out and how much enthusiasm they had,” Pizey-Allen said.

Pizey-Allen also coaches the water polo team at VMC, in addition to the club team Bushido, and said the program will help young players develop their water polo skills to continue on at higher levels.

“The hope is that kids will really enjoy it here and they’ll keep playing and when they come to Massey they can come out and play on that team,” Pizey-Allen said.

École Viscount Alexander (EVA) finished the season with a 3-9 record in the Manitoba Water Polo Association Middle Years league, which has six teams including River Heights, Churchill, and Charleswood. Although the record wasn’t perfect, the athletes said they’re proud of their accomplishments this year.

“The swimming part I think was the funnest and I think I improved a lot in swimming,” Grade 6 student Megan Carnegie said. “I think we did pretty good for our first time this year.”

Eleven-year-old Noah Ray joined the team to try a new sport and said the team’s strength was in its offence.

“We had some people who had been playing a lot, too,” Ray said, noting that a couple players had some experience with water polo. “I thought we were pretty good at moving the ball around.”

The team started the season with the basics of water polo, coaches say, and emphasized learning the rules, practising specialized treading, participating in a contact sport, and moving with the ball in the water.

“They learn fast and they’re interested in it; there are kids who came in not knowing how to do things as fundamental as eggbeater (tread), but then they come out and know how to play water polo,” assistant coach Karim Sidhom said.

“It’s something to continue and was very successful. There will be successful years to come, hopefully.”

“I think these guys have adapted and thrown themselves into it a lot quicker than a lot of new players that I’ve coached,” Pizey-Allen added. “The more I pushed them the more they seemed really excited and happy about the game. It was a lot of fun.”

Pizey-Allen is looking forward to next year’s season and said there is still opportunity for EVA to advance in the sport given the team’s enthusiasm.

“There’s been four Viscount kids so far who have signed up to play club and progress onto a higher level. So I’m very excited about those ones, and next year coming back, if we have all these Grades 6 and 7s returning then we’ll have a much, much stronger team,” Pizey-Allen said.

“And the Grade 8s who are going on to Massey, if we get them for four more years, they’re going to be titans.”

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