SPORT
WATER POLO Joe O’Connor (Year 13)
L ast summer, the Dulwich College senior Water Polo team left England for California to undergo an intensive training camp against some of the best water polo teams not just on the West Coast of America, but in the whole of the USA. Unfortunately, our first game was painful, not because of how unfit certain members of the team were, but because of the eye-watering score that the Americans inflicted on us, scoring double digits within the first quarter. However, playing against such good teams meant our improvements were rapid. By training two times a day, watching top Varsity team matches at Californian Universities and practicing new tactics apart from the traditional press defence, after a few games we managed to muster our first win against
the impressive Arroyo Grande Water Polo Club. Between training and matches, we were also fortunate enough to visit some fantastic places such as Facebook HQ and Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco and Universal Studios in Los Angeles. Despite being beaten by some phenomenal opponents, every individual in the team had dramatically improved by the end of the tour – with special mentions going to Barnaby Garland and Max Man, who epitomised how far we had come since the beginning of the tour. We returned from this unforgettable tour with some brilliant memories, a couple of bad haircuts and with a squad that had taken the next step in their performance and was more competent than it had ever been before.
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