Glasshouse 15-year-old finishes sixth at Youth water polo championships
GLASSHOUSE Mountains teenager, Byron Hay, has placed sixth in Australia in the U16s age group at the Australian Youth Water Polo Championships (AYWPC) held in Brisbane in the largest festival for water polo in the southern hemisphere.
Byron competed at the championships for two weeks, and enjoyed the competitiveness at the AYWPC that the contest brought, with 28,000 spectators glued to the water polo action.
“The competition was fierce and that’s what makes it really exciting.
I was fortunate to be selected this year to play in both the under 18 and under 16 divisions for Sunshine Coast.
“It was great to have the event hosted closer to home in Brisbane, last year we had to travel all the way to Perth”, he said.
Byron has been a youth member of the Sunshine Coast Water Polo club for three years, and trains all year round travelling to the northern end of the Coast to Peregian and Noosa to access his coach and Olympic water polo pools.
To compete at the AYWPC, Byron took part in an intensive pre-tournament camp, which included pool work, video reviews, dry land work and beach sessions, allowing him and other players of the team an opportunity to bond with their teammates.
“I really love my team and I’d never let them down, we are all such good mates and we all understand each other’s strengths and abilities.
“We train hard, we play hard, but I also think we are the team that has the most fun.
“We’re really quite unique in that way”, he said.
He also got to train with the local water polo team in Marbella, Spain in April last year, which was a once in a life time experience.
“It was an amazing experience,” he said.
“It was all in Spanish, so I had to try and work out what the coach was yelling at us, it took me a few days to get used to it.
The players were super friendly, a couple of them spoke a bit of English.
I don’t think they’d met an Aussie before so that was pretty cool,” Byron said.
Byron is already back to resume play in the Brisbane Water Polo Inc competition, which is a weekly tournament which finishes in March.
His next major competition is the Water Polo Queensland State Titles, taking place in Brisbane this April.
Image: Ian Martin PhotoConnect.