By Mikel Bhandari (Captain)
Hello Year 5s! We’re going straight to the point here, water polo is not for the faint-hearted! However, if you would like to challenge yourself and try something new, this is definitely the CCA for you!
Rest assured that you will be in the good hands of your seniors who will gladly assist you during training. Many of us were new to the sport as well, but under the patient guidance of our coaches, we were all able to pick up the sport relatively quickly! Both the boys’ and girls’ teams managed to take home silver in 2022 and the boys attained Gold for the 2023 A-Division Water Polo National School Games!
(Boys team at the 2023 A’Div Exhibition Match with their Gold Award)
Training sessions are held at our very own RI Hong Leong Swimming Complex. For the boys, CCA training is held every Monday and Wednesday in the afternoons, as well as on Saturday mornings. Meanwhile, the girls train on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, with each session lasting between 2.5 to 3 hours for both teams. The first few months leading up to NSGs are usually the most hectic, but they will be some of the most memorable times in your JC life!
As mentioned earlier, training does get tough, but we believe that this is really where our strong team camaraderie shines through. By offering one another words of encouragement, we are able to gain the strength to keep going. Likewise, we hope to see the new batch of J1s become a close-knit and cohesive team that can uplift one another, especially during stressful times!
Apart from trainings, we also have some CCA highlights that are non-training related! Team Raffles Games take place every year in RI in Term 3, where sports CCAs can choose to organise sporting competitions for the rest of the Year 5 batch.
You may be wondering, how did our CCA organise anything without making use of the pool? Well, last year, water polo was the host for handball! For once, we weren’t the ones on the field, as we instead had the privilege and enjoyment of refereeing the matches and cheering on our schoolmates.
Another exciting event was Gryphon’s Recall 2023. For this, we invite previous batches of RI water polo seniors to come down and spar with us, giving us the opportunity to learn useful skill sets from them that we can use for our own gameplay. For the boys, this provides us with a much-needed opportunity to catch up with our beloved seniors whom we used to play with, and for the girls, it is a time to make new connections with previous members of our CCA!
(Current and past RIWP boys at the 2023 Gryphons’ Recall)
(Current and past RIWP girls at the 2023 Gryphons’ Recall)
Still feeling unconvinced? Here are a few more reasons as to why you should join water polo! Despite the rigour, CCA is highly enjoyable. What makes water polo unique is that every match is different, so there are a ton of different scenarios to practice, ensuring that training never gets boring or mundane. Additionally, with it being a team sport, there are many instances where you would need to interact with your teammates.
So if you would like to meet new people and widen your social circle, joining water polo is a great way to do so! Last but not least, we can assure you that throughout your time in water polo, you will gain many rewarding experiences and heartwarming memories.
Anyone who can swim is welcome to join us, competitive experience in waterpolo is not required and we hope to see you at our CCA trials!
