Blog – Page 3 – West London Penguin

Update: coronavirus COVID-19

16 March 20205 September 2020
Masters Swimming, Water Polo

Following tonight’s Government announcement, the Penguin Committee has decided to postpone* the Club’s AGM on Wednesday 18th March 2020.

Until the AGM can be rearranged the existing Committee will remain in place to manage the running of the Club.

In the absence of the AGM at this time, we wish to report that the Club remains robust financially and we are deferring the changes in subscription rates for senior members that were approved at the 2019 AGM. This reflects our current uncertainty regarding pool closures in the coming weeks. We will review our position as circumstances change.

Regarding training sessions, we are closely monitoring guidance from the Government, Swim England and our pool/school operators and we will maintain sessions whilst guidance say that it is permitted to do so.

Swim England have just published a statement saying:
“At present the Government has not closed schools or restricted school activity and therefore we do not see any reason why clubs should not continue with their training programmes in their own environment within the guidelines of the facility.”

*The Club rules governing our decision to postpone the AGM are:

Rule 9.1 the AGM shall be held in March.
Rule 13.1 The Committee shall have power to make, repeal and amend such by-laws as they may, from time to time, consider necessary for the well being of the Club. Such by laws, repeals and amendments shall have effect until set aside by the Committee or at a General Meeting.

Yesterday the Committee made a new by-law allowing for the eventuality of postponing the AGM due to Coronavirus COVID-19.

Hillingdon Penguin Under 16s relish competing in London Water Polo League

16 February 202016 February 2020
Water Polo

On 2 February our Hillingdon Penguin Under 16 team had their second London Water Polo League tournament in Division 3, at Whitgift School in Croydon. We were simultaneously hosting an Under 12 LWPL tournament in Uxbridge so Sam McHugh stepped up and did a fantastic job of managing the U16 team.

Two of our players, Charlie Richardson and Dan Murphy, also gained some valuable experience as table officials looking after the scoreboard.

Charlie and Dan at the table — Charlie and Dan take charge of the scoreboard at the table

The final scores were:
Game 1: Kingston 4-7 Hillingdon Penguin (friendly game as Chelmsford didn’t show)
Game 2: Hillingdon Penguin 2-8 Beckenham
Game 3: Hillingdon Penguin 9-7 Haringey

Water polo game — Hillingdon Penguin in action

Coach Adam Maidment said, “It was another outstanding performance from everyone today. We not only attacked with pace, but also defended with strength and power. Jenson and Will won my MVPs for the tournament, by tightening up the defence and sparking quick counter attacks. Still lots to work on in training, but the effort and desire from everyone was phenomenal. Well done all!”

players holidng Most Valuable Player trophy — Penguin’s MVPs: Jenson and Will with coach Adam

Hillingdon Penguin Under 16 team — Hillingdon Penguin U16 team: Charlie, Will, Dan M, Will, Joshua, Sean, Oliver, Alfie, Lucas, Dan U and Jenson with coach Adam Maidment

Many thanks to everyone , especially Adam, Sam, Youguang (who took these great photos), Jez and all the fabulous parental support.

Looks like you all enjoyed it.

Jack Petchey Award for November 2019

15 January 202015 January 2020
Award, Water Polo

Things got pretty busy for us at the end of last year so post is a little overdue, but they say that good news is worth waiting for, so we are delighted to announce that the winner of the Jack Petchey Award for November 2019 was Molly Payne.

Molly by with coach Adam Maidment — Molly receiving her Jack Petchey Award from coach Adam Maidment

Molly is with our Hillingdon water polo juniors and works hard in every training session and gives 100% in her swimming. She always pushes herself to the limit and helps others in their training.

It’s great to see Molly enjoying our sport so much, with her play improving as her confidence grows, and showing herself to be a tough and popular player.

The grant we receive from the Jack Petchey Foundation was used towards a new trophy and pool time for our Friendly Tournament that took place on 1st December.

Water polo action in the pool — Molly, in green cap no.4, at the Friendly Tournament

The trophy is for the best development team – it was awarded for the first time at the Friendly Tournament, next at our Christmas Fun Tournament and will be awarded in future at all Fun Tournaments and friendlies at Uxbridge, to show the importance the Club places on developing players.

The Friendly Tournament was a big success (read about it here), not least with the Hillingdon Under-19s. On the day Molly said, ‘This is brilliant, I’m so excited to compete. I’m loving this!’

We are grateful to the Jack Petchey Foundation for their support in making the Friendly Tournament possible.

Hillingdon Penguin Christmas party, awards and Fun Tournament

2 January 20202 January 2020
Award, Water Polo

Our Fun Tournament and Christmas party in Uxbridge on Saturday 7 December wound up a particularly successful year for Hillingdon Penguin water polo. Sue Seagroatt, who manages this section, explains more…

This branch of the Club is flourishing thanks to the dynamic coaching team of Shaun, Adam, Mickey and Will, with occasional backup from Michael. Each coach works with a dedicated group of players in their own pool space, but they also collaborate to support each other and ensure the development of every child. We are especially excited to have welcomed Will this term, who has settled right in.

Fun Tournament
We were honoured that Martin Waller made space in his ridiculously busy schedule to referee and hand out the awards. Congratulations to the Red Team who won the tournament.

Red Team holding trophy — Winners of the Fun Tournament, the Red Team, proudly holding the Penguin Development Trophy: Will H (captain), Olly, Luis, Robyn, Oliver D, Hannah, Órlaith, Thalia, Lize, Sophie and Alvaro, with coaches Shaun and Mickey.

Party
Somehow Sam managed to put on the party, despite having flu that day. She claims each party is easier than the last, which is a reflection of her organisation skills. We are truly grateful for all her efforts, assisted by Emma, Keith, Miri and Heidi. The parents had brought an amazing spread ranging from sushi, vegetarian pasta/biryani and pizza to cakes, millionaires shortcake, pastries, cheese and fruit.

Awards September to December 2019
As always, it was difficult to make individual awards as the teams have all performed so well and we’ve seen many players improve and exceed expectations this term.

Development Group – nominated and presented by their coach Mickey Tritto

Coach’s Player: Thomas Baldwin
Most Improved: Kefren Scarmel
Most Valuable Player: Vicky Mouratidi

Coach Mickey with award winners — Thomas, Kefren and Vicky, with coach Mickey

Intermediate Group – nominated and presented by their coach Shaun Hill

Best Newcomer: Scarlett Sills (pictured further down the page)
Most Improved: Thalia Ross and Lize Crone

Coach Shaun with award winners — Intermediate Group winners Thalia and Lize with coach Shaun

Shaun gave a special mention to Hadi, who has been selected to represent London at Under 14, meaning he was away competing in the Inter Regional Championships, so unable to attend today; and Bailey for his club swimming.

Martin awarded bronze medals to Bailey and Sam who played in the Middlesex U14 team in the Inter Counties in September. Their teammates Hadi and Alex R could not attend.

Award winners — Bailey and Sam receive their medals from the Middlesex U14 team in the Inter Counties in September. With Martin Waller and coach Shaun

Advanced Groups: U16s & Above – nominated and presented by their coach Adam Maidment

Coach’s Player: Luke Wang – gives 100% in every session and is always well disciplined
Most Improved: Jay Melvin – she has really improved since joining in the spring and has shown great spirit in the U16s team

Award winner — Advanced group winner Luke with coach Adam

Adam is very proud of this group as a whole and how their fitness has improved. He specifically mentioned the Under 19s performance in the December Friendly, and Amber who is competing with the Penguin senior women’s water polo team.

Thank you to all our parents
The speeches ended with resounding thank yous to the parents. Sam’s organisation of the party today is just one of her contributions this term, and Ruth and Emma have helped with ordering kit. We are also indebted to Amazing Anton, Youguang for the photographs and everyone who has been co-opted into running the table at competitions.

See you all in 2020, when training restarts on Saturday 4 January and the Hillingdon Penguin U12s compete for the first time on Sunday 5 January in the London Water Polo League.

Friendly water polo tournament at Hillingdon

21 December 201922 December 2019
Water Polo

On Sunday 1 December Hillingdon Penguin hosted a friendly junior water polo tournament with invited teams from John Lyon School (Harrow) and Northampton.

Hillingdon London Youth Games water polo team — Hillingdon LYG Team with coach Shaun Hill

Jon Lane of Northampton had contacted us earlier in the term explaining that they have many kids who weren’t getting game time and asking if we would like to play them. Once we managed to book the pool space, we were on!

The tournament was all about player development and this was the first outing for our new trophy, the ‘Penguin Development Cup’, awarded to the best team at this and future development games in Uxbridge.

We fielded two teams:

the London Youth Games (LYG) team which we are developing to represent Hillingdon borough
our Under 19s, giving experience to older players who rarely get the chance to compete.

Hillingdon U19 water polo team — Hillingdon U19 Team with coach Adam Maidment

We had suspected that Harrow was developing a strong LYG team but we thought they might struggle for players in their Under 19 squad. In fact, they put out two strong teams, having boosted their U19s with players from Harrow School.

We are so lucky to have generous water space at Hillingdon Sports and Leisure Centre, allowing us to divide the pool into two pitches. For this tournament we used a custom-made pool divider cleverly devised by Anton; he scavenged some discarded lane-rope floats and positioned them on a length of rope at measured intervals to help make refereeing decisions clear and make the divider obvious to players. On this, its first use, it was a great success. Pitch A was designated for LYG games, pitch B for U19 games.

Northampton water polo team — Team Northampton

We’d already allowed for the distance Northampton had to travel by scheduling them into later matches. However, their arrival was further delayed when their minibus had to divert because the M1 was closed. So, while the Northampton players enlivened their extended journey by singing carols, we added extra matches for the Harrow and Hillingdon teams although they didn’t count in the final results.

All the games were brilliantly competitive, with Harrow the victors in both categories.

Harrow water polo team — The winners : Team Harrow with coach John Nikolovski, who were delighted with the trophy.

Many thanks to Jon Lane from Northampton and John Nikolovski from John Lyon School for bringing teams, coaching and refereeing. Thanks also to Adam Maidment, Shaun Hill and Michelangelo Tritto for coaching the Hillingdon teams, refereeing and set up. Credit too for Anton for his ingenuity and our parent scorers Adrian, Khairul, Emma and Katrina.

The pool time and trophy were part-funded by a grant from the Jack Petchey Foundation, for which we are very grateful.