The North East 2006+ Girls team competed at the Inter Regions in Walsall on 30th November and the 1st Dec 2020.
The team’s Head Coach, Kevin Swainson, reports:
“We had our team talk before the first match and set out our tactics for the weekend. I felt that if we played as a team, not as individuals, we had a very good chance of a medal.
Going into the competition I was confident in our team, with two very capable Centre Backs in Connie and Amelia I felt that we could ball line press in defence and put allot of pressure on the attacking team. We had worked hard on this in the last few weeks and it paid dividends at the weekend only conceding 17 goals in the whole tournament and causing the attacking teams allot of problems.Â
This was complimented by our scoring capabilities; we played excellent as a team in attack with very good, unselfish water polo from the whole team resulting in every single player scoring during the weekend.  This included taking advantage of the new rules and allowing our goalkeeper to join the attack. Severn came out to attack three times and we scored on all three occasions including two goals from our goalkeeper Severn which I think was one of the highlights of the whole weekend for the whole team. We managed 75 goals in 6 matches, that is 17 more than any other team in the competition.
The semi-final against North West was a fantastic match and in fairness the score did not reflect how close the match was, the girls started fantastic against the tournaments number one seed and showed grit and determination for the full match.
The final was a re-match of our earlier encounter with Ireland, Ireland had won the first time 7-4 but we felt that this could be a result that we could turn around. Ireland came at us very strong, frustrating our players in attack and forcing us to rush and make mistakes. With the score line at 5-2 down with only 3 minutes left on the clock some teams would have given up but the girls showed grit, determination and heart to score 3 times in the last 3 mins to take the match to penalties.
No one likes a penalty shootout but the girls although extremely nervous performed fantastic, good penalties taken by all the players and Severn managing to pull off two fantastic saves won us the title.
Congratulations to Laura who won team MVP, Tournament MVP and top goal scorer in the tournament.
Special thanks to Gabby, Liz and Michelle for your help at the weekend and for your assistance in the weeks building up to the competition.
Thank you to the parents for your support during the weekend, without your support we would not be the team we are.
And last but probably the most important, thank you to the players for the effort you all put it to make this weekend such a success and so enjoyable. The team not only worked well together in the pool they all got on so well outside the pool and on behalf of myself, gabby and Liz I would like to wish the team a long and successful future in the sport.”
The Team included:
Severn Annakin – St bede’s and st joseph’s catholic college
Amelia Hendesron – Sedgefield WPC
Ruby Taylor – City of Sheffield WPC
Connie Swainson – Rotherham Metro WPC
Lilly Pryce – St bede’s and st joseph’s catholic college
Lola Carver-Brown – Rotherham Metro
Caitlin Urqhuart – City of Sheffield WPC
Laura Skelton – Rotherham Metro
Amelia Brooksbank – St bede’s and st joseph’s catholic college
Isobel Olcer – Rotherham Metro WPC
Results
North east Steelers    26 – 0 Wales
North east Steelers    4 – 7 Ireland
North east Steelers    16 – 0 East Midland
North east Steelers    14 – 1 South East
Semi Final
North east Steelers    10 – 4 North West Thunder
Final
North east Steelers    8 – 6 Ireland (After Penalties)
Well done, congratulations and thanks to all involved for your achievement.
