Water Polo: Girls lift historic silver medals

Mount College senior girls' A team. Back from left, Georgia Reardon, Ashley Maylor, Georgia Aitken, Julia Kayes, Alisha Winstanley, Caitlyn Lyttle, Paul Kayes (coach). Front, Malia Josephson, Ella Pollock, Grace Elisara, Sophie Dobbs and Shinae Carrington. Photo / Supplied

Mount Maunganui College senior girls' A team have returned from the North Island champs in Auckland with silver medals - the first Division One senior medals a Tauranga team has won since 2002.

The Mount girls performed superbly. The Auckland schools' championships had just finished and a lot of very strong teams were in Auckland. Several had their own pools the size and standard of Baywave. Mount College played most of their games at Diocesan School for Girls.

As expected, the games were tough and tense with extremely close competition between the top 11 teams.

Mount College made it into the semifinals after two draws, a win and a loss.

The girls stepped up in style in the semifinal shutting out Rangitoto Girls 5-2, with Sophie Dobbs top scoring with two goals.

"In the semifinal game our defence was excellent and the patience shown on attack and some lovely passing won us the semifinal," said coach Paul Kayes.

"The final was against Westlake Girls', who had thrashed everyone else up until then. It remained close 'til half time with us trailing 1-2. We missed a penalty, which would have tied it up, and then also missed a heap of field goal shots.

"To Westlake's credit they just slowly but surely took the game away from us a goal at a time.

"They were easily the best team and have set the benchmark for the nationals in two weeks' time and I hope we meet them in the final.

"Alisha Winstanley, our goalie, saved her two best games of the tournament for the last two games and was deservedly named one the four Most Outstanding Players of the tournament."

Mount College results: Round 1: Beat St Mary's 10-7, lost to St Cuthbert's 5-3; Round 2: Drew with Baradene 5-5, drew with Diocesan Girls' 3-3; Semifinal: Beat Rangitoto 5-2; Final: Lost to Westlake Girls' 1-6.