Water polo: 'Beautiful game' secured with title

Tauranga's under-14A boys' water polo team are national champions after beating North Harbour in the final.

Coach Brendan Horan went to unusual lengths to ensure his Tauranga under-14A boys' team was the best prepared of all at the national championships held in Wellington this week.

His novel preparation included having the New Zealand and former Japan synchronised swimming coaches take the boys through drills to improve their underwater posture.

And it paid off as Tauranga decisively beat favourites North Harbour 7-4 in the final to win their first national title in the grade.

"It was a real community effort. We had the two synchro coaches take sessions to make the leg work better on our boys because treading water is a major component of water polo. It was really clear to see that we were higher out of the water than the other teams. Also a local dentist moulded mouth guards for all the boys, which was a great help," Horan said.

"The boys played really, really well. It was a great challenge for them but they prepared very well. All the boys swam outside of training so when they came to water polo training we could really concentrate on doing a lot of skills and ball work. We ended up having the fastest swimmers there with six of the boys able to go under a minute for 100 metres. There are not many teams that can boast that.

"Most of our players are also surf life savers so they have the added benefit of having that extra strength and fitness.

"I am just so pleased that we were able to go there and bring home the gold."

Horan said Tauranga won over the crowd in Wellington which made a huge difference.

"Even some of the North Harbour supporters came up to us and said if anyone is going to beat them they were glad it was Tauranga because "you guys play such a beautiful game". That is really the ultimate compliment."

Tauranga's Bae Fountain and Loui Schuler made the tournament team with Fountain also named overall tournament MVP.

"Both players were absolutely magnificent," Horan said. "Bae was clearly the number one goalkeeper in the whole tournament and is actually the New Zealand under-16 goalie as well. He was very, very strong for us but we could have had three or four more in that tournament team, but they only named six and they like to spread it around.

"For me all of our boys were MVPs. "