Geraldton’s water polo season starts for 2022-23 as defending women’s champs B52’s take on the Rats

Players are preparing to dive in and make a splash of the new water polo season, which starts this weekend. Round one of the 2022-23 season begins on Friday and Saturday at Geraldton’s Aquarena in what’s set to be another exciting year. Defending women’s A-grade champs B52’s take on the Rats in the last game of Saturday’s play. The reigning A-grade men’s champions Demons have a country week round at 3.25pm. Geraldton Water Polo Association’s Julia Gourley said they were excited for the new season to start. “We’ve brought back dolphin ball which is a great introduction to water polo for children aged pre-primary to Year 2,” she said. “We also have formed a junior sub-committee and our first project that we are working on is sending two teams to Perth in January for the Australian youth water polo championships. “This is a great opportunity for our junior members to experience a competition which usually has 200 plus clubs from around Australia involved.” Rats’ B-grade women’s coach Wade Kalajzich said he has seen increased interest in the sport this year. ‘”So far at the Rats preseason committee meetings we have had a lot of interest and large numbers of registrations particularly in the junior cohort for under 16s,” he said. “We have an exciting coaching line-up and a lot of enthusiasm from the younger players who have already started their preseason training and are looking forward to getting back into the pool to return to playing water polo.” Heading into his third year as coach of the A-grade B52’s women’s team, Corey Smith is aiming for a third premiership in a row. “I’m hoping for strong contributions from our veterans Emma Smith, Abbey Benham and Aimee Hagan,” Smith said. “We have lost three to four girls from last year and we will look to rising stars Evie Prout and Emily Larson in goals to take the next step. Expecting a big year from Tenielle Hawke who’s been training the house down and first time all-star last year Indi Smith. “Our girls will have benefited a lot over the last couple years from making themselves available to play country week and will reap the rewards of pushing themselves to higher levels against better competition.”