Australian Stingers women’s water polo players, Ashleigh Southern, Zoe Arancini (WAIS-AIS) and Kelsey Wakefield will headline a group of the country’s finest young players as the National Junior team make final preparations for September’s FINA World Junior Championships in Trieste, Italy.
Fresh off starring for Australia at the recent Kirishi Cup in Russia, Southern, Arancini and Wakefield will join their fellow up and coming superstars in a training camp in Perth where the squad will be put through their paces in lead up matches against Australian, Greek, Hungarian and New Zealand senior teams.
The squad has strong WAIS element to it, coached by WAIS women’s water polo head coach Peter Szilagyi, whilst scholarship holders Eloise Pierce, Claire Pierce and Eliesha Browne will all join Arancini in the squad.
An original squad of 15 has been selected for these matches as well as six further games against the Australian World University Games team.
Coach Peter Szilagyi said these fixtures give his team a great opportunity to practice and refine their game plan and develop an attacking mindset ahead of the world champs.
“During the preparation we wish to play impressive offensive polo and our schedule allows us to train for that, but at the World Championships we also want to win all of our six games, so we may have to be adaptable as well,” Szilagyi said.
“This is a very strong age group world wide with China, Canada, USA and the European nations all very strong, but we’re confident we can beat any team and happy to play off for gold against anyone.”
After the training camp in Perth, the team will be cut down to 13 and will then travel to Europe where they will embark upon a tour through Hungary and Netherlands en route to Italy.
The Eger Cup in Hungary and subsequent games against the host nation could prove to be the vital lead up as the two nations face each other in the round robin stages of the Trieste championships.
Szilagyi believes their world championships opening encounter against the Hungarians could be very important and may decide the nature of the tournament.
“Hungary are very strong as 12 of their team played in the senior squad in the European World League preliminaries, so I think that match will determine who will win the group,” he said.
“We have a good record against them though, and I have real high expectations for this group as the girls are potential Olympians for Rio 2016 and London 2012.”
The Perth training camp will be held from July 2 – 23 with the team to fly out in late August.
Australian 20 & Under Squad-
GOALKEEPERS:
Kelsey Wakefield (1991, QLD), Eloise Pierce (1993, WA)
FIELD PLAYERS:
Jayde Appel (1994, NSW), Hannah Buckling (1992, NSW), Emily Scott (1991, NSW), Madison Schmid (1994, NSW), Ashleigh Southern (1992, QLD), Elle Armit (1991, QLD), Olivia King (1992, QLD) , Genevieve Venosta (1992, VIC), Emma Jo Graham (1991, VIC), Claire Pierce (1991, WA), Zoe Arancini (1991, WA), Eliesha Browne (1992, WA), Isobel Bishop (1991, SA)
– Water Polo Australia
