HENLEY SHARKS WATER POLO CLUB

Susie Smith

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For me, I first watched a water polo game at the old Henley Olympic Pool and immediately I knew I wanted to play that game!

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Peter Bayne kindly offered to teach a few of us swimmers the basic skills over the winter season. There was Jo Gilbert, Natalie Hanson, De-Arne Smith, Nikki Fidler, Fiona Tomlin and myself as I recall, who after finishing our swim sessions eagerly jumped at the chance to learn eggbeater kick and how to pick up and pass the water polo ball in the freezing cold Police Academy pool at Fort Largs.

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From that group of girls Peter, Jill Glastonbury and Lyn Kaesler coached through U16, U21, B Women and A Women teams at Henley we won the B grade premiership in our first year and A grade premiership a couple of years later.

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I think this same group of girls, plus Sally Steinhardt who joined Henley later, went on to form the backbone of SA representative teams. Gaining junior success for SA with silver medal in 1987 (school girls) and bronze medals in 1986 (School girls), 1987 and 1989 (U21).

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No doubt our swimming background and strong skills base enabled us to achieve this success. I know we developed a pretty good counter attacking game and scored many goals from off-the- water-shots learnt at the Fort Largs Police Academy on those freezing cold winter nights!

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When I played there were no junior Australian squads for the girls. The only pathway to national selection was school girl teams and the Australian squad. Fiona Tomlin and I made the school girls team in 1987 and toured NZ. I then in 1989 progressed to the Australian squad on the back of a successful SA team coached by Jill Glastonbury at the nationals in Hobart in 1989 (bronze medal). This SA team was full of Henley representatives with Natalie Hanson, Vanessa Hanson, De-Arne Smith, Angie Smith, Tiera Mikuzia, Sally Steinhardt and myself making up half the squad!

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Australian team camps were held at the AIS and from a group of about 30 girls, a team of 13 was selected to compete at the Coupe de Excellence in Montreal, Canada in early 1989, where we finished 4th. This was my first senior representative cap for Australia.

Following gruelling training camps back in Australia, I was selected for the team for the 1989 Fina World Cup in Eindenhoven, Holland. We finished 5th at the world cup ensuring automatic selection for the next world cup. Prior to the world cup we competed in an 8 Nations Tournament in Antwerp, Belgium, where we finished 3rd.

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Playing for Australia was a wonderful privilege and was made possible by the kindness and dedication of my coaches and the many volunteers who gave so much of their time to water polo and our club.