Women vs Surrey - 21/10/2019

BLWP 3 - 12 Surrey

The women came together in full force to ace the first match of the year. With such dedication, a full team of 13 was fielded. A heroic finalist - despite being at the airport dropped everything to play with us in Shadwell. We had four water polo tadpoles making big debuts in this match, their pre-match nerves soon disappeared as soon as the whistle blew.

Ready to show Surrey what we were made of, the team pressed hard and set up some textbook arcs – there’s a first time for everything! Surrey were never going to give us an easy time but in the first quarter we gave a strong defense, especially with our polish beauty, Ania, taking to pit for the first time and giving them more than they bargained for! Our speedy tadpole Jasmine managed to chase her player down and work some magic with those long arms to steal that ball back.
We ended that quarter 2-0 down, but were determined to fight back and even the score.

The second quarter is where we lost it slightly… Our formations could no longer be seen and there were gaps in our defense allowing Surrey to counter and end the second quarter 9-0.

Third quarter, and we were back in the game. We were not defeaten, and used the previous quarter as motivation to work even harder. Emma smashed the swim off, and passed along the line beautifully to Ania who switched into beast mode and scored our first goal of the match! The energy was still high and we were passing well and not letting Surrey intimidate us. Soph had an absolutely incredible quarter in goal, saving some big shots – that’s one mighty finalist with a LUSL1A mentality. Tadpole Ava took no nonsense when defending her player on the wing, opening the ball up for us to gain possession again. Shortly after, our fiery red head Annie swam the ball in from 5m scored our second goal!

We ended that quarter 10-2 to Surrey, but with fire in our bellies. We took that fire straight back into the final quarter. Tadpole Charis and Tadpole Sophia worked well as a team taking the ball towards the goal, with great control on the ball despite being put under pressure from Surrey. Joanna saved us again by moving into pit when we were defending, playing a blinder denying any attempt surrey made at passing in to pit. It was in this quarter Surrey were blinded by our Grace, who scored our final goal from the wing. Surrey unfortunately fought back hard, taking instruction from their Australian National team goalie, and scored 2 more. The final result Surrey 12 – Barts 3.

Overall, this was an incredible first game showing that the BLWP womens team 2k19/20 has buckets of potential.

Imy de Trafford

Goals:
A. Wosniak : 1
A. Wright : 1
G. Catchpole : 1