After earning the women’s bronze medal at the University Sport South Africa week and capturing the Port Elizabeth men’s league title, the Madibaz Water Polo Club can look back on a highly satisfactory year.<\/p>\n
The successes over the past 11 months have provided a boost for the club, with coach Delaine Christian saying they had set the bar for the years ahead.<\/p>\n
Christian, herself, was at the forefront of the recognition Nelson Mandela University water polo received as she was named coach of the year at the varsity’s annual Achiever Awards function.<\/p>\n
She said one of the highlights this year was their third-place finish at the USSA tournament in Johannesburg, having approached the week without any major expectations.<\/p>\n
“At the beginning of the season we had a different view because then we were definitely aiming for a top three,” said Christian. “Just before going to the tournament, however, two key players had to pull out because of various reasons.<\/p>\n
“This meant we went to the week with a very small and inexperienced team, only two of whom had previously attended the tournament. So we knew it would be difficult.”<\/p>\n
She added they had not put any pressure on themselves and approached it with the idea of playing hard and to play as a team, while also making sure it was fun.<\/p>\n
“To come third (behind winners UCT and Stellenbosch) was way above what we had imagined, especially as we had ended fourth or fifth in the last three years.<\/p>\n
“It’s an amazing result and we know now that we are capable of so much more.”<\/p>\n
Christian said good management had been one of the keys to their success, as well as a team that worked well together.<\/p>\n
“This year was the first time we trained throughout and we had a really good structure in place.”<\/p>\n
Madibaz water polo manager Melinda Goosen said it was equally satisfying to win the local men’s league.<\/p>\n
“It was very well contested throughout and the men’s league is highly competitive. For our team to pull off the win was a real feather in their caps.”<\/p>\n
She added that those successes had been part of “an incredible season” for Madibaz water polo.<\/p>\n
“We ran our first winter water polo five-a-side tournament, had several players in the provincial teams and some in the SA women’s squad.”<\/p>\n
Goosen said Christian – who is an U17 and U19 national selector – had made a major impact in water polo at the varsity.<\/p>\n
She mentored the Madibaz women’s team to the NMB league title in 2016-17 and was instrumental in establishing men’s and women’s second teams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After earning the women’s bronze medal at the University Sport South Africa week and capturing the Port Elizabeth men’s league title, the Madibaz Water Polo Club can look back on a highly satisfactory year. The successes over the past 11 months have provided a boost for the club, with coach Delaine Christian saying they had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":58746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3067,1771,3062,1810,1234,2093,1967,3063,3066],"class_list":["post-13728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-more-sport","tag-delaine-christian","tag-madibaz","tag-madibaz-water-polo","tag-melinda-goosen","tag-port-elizabeth","tag-university-sport-south-africa","tag-ussa","tag-ussa-water-polo-week","tag-water-polo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}