Water Polo Season
Thursday, 2nd April 2026 at 10:09am
The 2026 Senior Water Polo season has come to an end with our Green Bay High School senior team returning to winning ways after a tough couple of years.
The season was short, generally sunny, generally successful and shows that we can be confident of building on a solid foundation. Following on from the junior season in Term 4 last year, we went into the first games with measured confidence. Many of the Year 11s had played together in that junior team, with Bea, Carter, Henry, Willow and Sheehan complementing each other in the pool. Elise and Stephen stepped straight into senior water polo from Intermediate school, bolstered by the arrival of Cooper from St Peters. We were lucky to have Dylan's experience and a triumvirate of Jamie, Hazel and Alyssa from Year 13.
The team played some cracking water polo at Kings College in the sunshine and at the National Aquatic Centre - and, as some of the start times provided a great challenge to parent support with journeys through Auckland rush hour traffic, the players should be very grateful to their support teams for getting them to the right place at the right time.
Thank you to all of the other GBHS supporting students who made the effort to get to the games - your support is always so welcome.
The success of the team - finally coming in 2nd place only to the very well resourced Kings College - is there to see in the numbers, with the mighty Green Machine scoring more goals across the season than any other team - and nine more than first place Kings.
Some great work by all the players across the season and too many individual little victories in personal battles to list here: all the things that were spotted and commented on in the post-game debriefs, and the even greater number of successes (above and below the water!) that went without comment but were fabulous all the same. Alyssa and Dylan did a sterling job with the coaching and may return in that role in the future.
It really was a pleasure to hang out with students who were competitive and determined in the pool and so supportive and positive out of the water. Water polo is not a game for the faint of heart - in its physical challenges of relentless swimming at pace and struggling with the opposition players, in its tactical awareness and showing ball handling skills in a reasonably damp environment. And it is also not a space for negativity and malice, and I was very impressed with our play and the play of our opponents across the season.
GBHS Water Polo Team, 2026: - Bea Boyd, Carter Brewer, Cooper Evans, Alyssa Fell, Hazel Hochwimmer, Henry Klimetz, Willow Lampkin, Sheehan Peris, Jamie Philip, Stephen Townley, Dylan Tukia and Elise Wyat.
