News

Bracknell Masters Open Meet is on Saturday 6 March.

50m, 100m and 200m events in all strokes, 100m and 200m individual medley and team events. Closing date is 6 February. Full details available here.

Contact Stu Bell if you're interested.

Penguin men's water polo team had a good game on Wednesday last week, that included the return of Miguel Ortiz after a long absence.

We had a good start and never let the game slip away from us. Although we conceded too many goals in the deep end quarters, some strong contributions from Miguel and Piers Martin saw us home.

However, the stand out performance of the night was a three goal haul (including an inch perfect lob that everyone else swears was a pass) from Justin Shute, despite his claim of returning from his sick bed!

Final score Penguin 11, Ealing 6.

Penguin Men's first team won both their matches as the London League Premier Division got underway on Sunday 11 April 2010 at Whitgift.

Penguin took a narrow victory in the first game against Sutton and Cheam; final score 16-15. The second match against Beckenham was also high-scoring and saw a close result with Penguin winning by two goals, 15-13.

The Men's second team also started well with a 10-4 win against Otter in their home match at St Paul's on Wednesday 14 April.

Penguin Ladies first team won all three of their matches in the third round of the Spring Cup on Saturday 10 April 2010 in Walsall.

Our first match against Liverpool A was a close run affair with Penguin taking the victory 7-6. Next up was Manchester B and a more decisive win for Penguin, 14-3. The last match of the day was against Caledonia which we won 7-4.

This puts Penguin into the semi finals in Corby on 17 April 2010.

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.