Category: Award

We’re posting this to coincide with the 16th birthday of our latest Jack Petchey Award winner, Will Hames.

Happy Birthday, Will, we think you’re amazing!

Fortunately, we were able to present the Award to Will on our last water polo training session in Uxbridge before the country went into ‘lockdown’.

The presentation was made, fittingly, by three of Will’s peers – Charlie Richardson, Dan Murphy and Anderson Jolly – who are all previous recipients of the Award.

Reason for Award: Will is arguably the most talented water polo player to have trained with us in the past five years. This Award recognises not only this, but also his outstanding coaching.

Since October, Will has been coaching our Beginners. He is an excellent coach: selfless, kind and patient and given his playing experience, also authoritative. The other members of the coaching team at Hillingdon – Shaun Hill, Adam Hill and Michelangelo Tritto – are glad to have Will onboard to enable them to deliver their development plan. Our new joiners are very lucky to be coached by him and with this award we are glad to have the opportunity to say thank you for his valuable contribution.

Given the present circumstances it seems wise to delay our decision about how the Jack Petchey grant money should be spent, but we look forward to discussing this with Will when training resumes.

Will, from everyone at Hillingdon Penguin and the wider Penguin Club, we wish you an fantastic birthday! You certainly deserve it.

We are grateful to the Jack Petchey Foundation for their support.

Sue Seagroatt shares the good things that were happening with the Hillingdon Penguin water polo juniors before the coronavirus COVID-19 lockdown, as a reminder of the training sessions that we are all missing so much…

Our final training session was on Saturday 14 March. Sensing this might be our last for a while, the coaches abandoned their lesson plans and put on a spontaneous Fun Tournament. But ahead of that there was a special presentation of a Jack Petchey Leader Award.

Jack Petchey Leader Award
Adam Maidment’s passion and dedication to coaching water polo has been recognised by our young water polo players, who put him forward for a Jack Petchey Leader Award. We are thrilled that he won it, and the award was presented by three of our players, Charlie Richardson, Dan Murphy and Anderson Jolly, from the Advanced Group which Adam coaches.

Adam’s coaching achievements
Adam has been coaching the Hillingdon Penguin Advanced Group for the past three years. He started almost by accident at a training session in April 2017, when two of our coaches unexpectedly failed to turn up. Adam stepped forward and things went from there. His initiative and willingness were admirable and it soon became evident that he had the makings of a good coach. Since then Adam’s insistence on good discipline and fitness has transformed this group of players. Adam plans his sessions meticulously, constantly adding new ideas to keep them interesting. He also likes to spring random beep tests, which have the double benefit of demonstrating the upward progress of the groups’ fitness statistics.

In June 2017 Adam received a Jack Petchey Achievement Award (for young people). At that time he spoke of his aspiration to complete a water polo coaching course. He’s had to wait a while for Swim England to schedule some courses, but at last his ambition was realised when he attended the Level 1 Coaching Water Polo course in July 2019 followed by Level 2 in February 2020, both tutored by Tim Kendall.

You’ll know from previous posts that Adam has also been enjoying the responsibility of coaching the Hillingdon Penguin Under-16 team. This means that he is obliged to referee games at London Water Polo League U16 Division 3 tournaments, which he has been doing with advice and support from Chris Martin. Adam’s current ambition is to attend a refereeing course.

Thank you for all you do Adam!

Michelangelo Tritto gains Assistant Water Polo Coach qualification
Another of our young Hillingdon Penguin coaches, Mickey, also completed a Level 1 coaching course delivered in mid-March by Simon Wooley. Mickey thanked the Club for organising his participation: ‘The course was a great experience, which will hopefully show next year’.

James Warrener, London Swimming Regional Development Officer, was instrumental in helping us secure bursaries towards the cost of Adam’s Level 2 and Mickey’s Level 1 qualifications. James explained, ‘The region are happy we can support our coaches which will then help clubs grow.’

Fun Tournament
As I mentioned earlier, when we sensed that our session on 14 March might be our last for a a while, we made it into a Fun Tournament (more usually happening at the end of each term). With an attendance of 56 we divided players into six teams under captains Amber, Anderson, Michael, Mickey, Olly and Will H. As you can see from the team names on the scoreboard, we were already feeling the loss of Premier League football!

Well done ‘Spurs’ who were the winners: Michael, Sophie, Bailey, Sam, Thomas, Thalia, Lize, Charlie and Alex R.

Thanks to Adam for organising and Anton and Adrian for scoring. I hope you enjoy this snippet of action from the tournament, for all of us missing our pool:

Meanwhile two of our enterprising young siblings were brave enough to shake a collection jar at everyone they could find watching the water polo or using the leisure centre that day, and managed to collect £84.79 for Sport Aid. Well done Zoe and Elizabeth!

We are grateful to the Jack Petchey Foundation for their support.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

While the BBC was gearing up to announce the Sports Personality of the Year, I was invited to join our Latymer Penguin water polo squad and their families to celebrate their recent successes and present Club trophies to some of our own Penguin sports personalities of the year. And there was cake!

Laytmer Penguin’s head coach, Claudio, was our host for the afternoon. He ran through an impressive list of achievements from the second half of the year – see below – with players collecting medals from various tournaments and the U16 mixed inter-regional trophy presented by Club President, Louis Lemieux.

Then it was my turn to announce the Club’s two annual awards with winners all coming from the Latymer Penguin section this year.

Ron Turner Memorial Trophy

A beaming Toby Roberts received the Ron Turner Memorial Trophy. Toby was nominated in recognition of his dedication, effort and commitment to water polo and the Club, and his family tell me that he lives and breathes the sport. These qualities sit alongside Toby’s GB and national caps over the past two years and he is a great role model for our younger players both at Laytmer Penguin and at Hillingdon Penguin where Toby started his water polo journey with us. Although not present, Elliot McHugh was highly commended.

Rob Derbyshire Memorial Trophy

The Rob Derbyshire Memorial Trophy was presented to the Under 17 Boys team which won the Swim England National Age Group Championships (NAGS) in April – Emile, Andre, Omar, Malek, Iker, Giorgio, Charles, Cai, Omari, Charlie, Theo, Ejike, Josh, Luca, Leonardo, Antonio and Abelardo.

Winning the NAGS title was a fantastic achievement which took many of the more established juniors’ teams from other clubs by surprise. The team’s performance brought great credit to the Club and their victory has put us back on the map at a national level.

In case you missed it at the time, here’s the team with Coach Claudio, fully-clothed, leaping into the pool to celebrate becoming U17 Boys National Champions.

Parents and coaches

Looking back on my swimming childhood, I can now appreciate how much time and goodwill my parents devoted to getting me to and from training and competitions, and how much the coaches invested in developing us. 

It’s the same story for all our young Penguins today.  The unstinting support of our parents and coaches underpins all the successes and the development of the water polo players of tomorrow. Your names may not appear on the trophies, but the honours belong to you too.

Oh, and you know how to lay on a mean selection of party food! Cake, traditional Christmas treats from around the world, freshly popped popcorn and fruit… please can I come to all your end of term parties from now on?

Back into the water

I don’t know how they did it but, once the food was eaten,  the players got into the pool for a fun tournament. Clearly, nothing gets in the way when there’s a chance to play water polo.

Thank you for having me there.

Sarah Wren

Secretary , West London Penguin Swimming and Water Polo Club

Latymer Penguin achievements in the second half of 2019