Sedgefield Water polo squad was founded in 1997 with the support of the Sedgefield 75’s swimming club and soon after the water polo club established itself as the leading club for junior water polo in the northeast, to include Northumberland, Cleveland, Cumbria and Yorkshire. From the year 2000 Sedgefield have been one of the strongest clubs in the country, a marvellous achievement considering the competition from the big clubs of Sheffield, Rotherham, Manchester, Liverpool, Cheltenham and London.
July 9th 2006 brought the boy's under 17's water polo team to the national finals defeating Croydon, Manchester, Dunfirmline, London Invicta and Birmingham to get their place, they then successfully beat Cheltenham 10 - 6 to win. In the under 19 championships Sedgefield defeated Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, and Cheltenham to gain a place in the finals but narrowly lost to London Invicta in the finals 9 - 7. This was a magnificent effort by Sedgefield beating so many big city clubs once again.
Sedgefield have now gained three national titles in the last six seasons. Sedgefield has dominated the North-East region, which include Yorkshire, Northumberland and Durham for the last six years in junior water polo.
Sedgefield first international player was Matthew Bowden who played many games for the Great Britain team, including world and European championship matches. Since this time we have had 4 girls from our team represent the UK in the European championships in Manchester, Miss Angela Winstanley-Smith is currently playing professionally for France and Miss Carol Mohan is playing for Australia’s leading team Perth. Seven other sedgefield players have also gained international caps.
In the 2006 Commonwealth water polo championships held in Australia, no less than three girls from Sedgefield water polo club played in the England team, Carol Mohan, Angela Winstanley-Smith and Chloe Wilcox.
Miss Angela Winstanley-Smith has been playing professional water polo in France for the last two years and has just signed to play for Nice, she is the first girl from Great Britain to play Professional water polo.
Scott Carpenter whom is now playing for our sister club Lancaster in the National League first division has helped them to their 9th title in 11years and become the first person in nearly 50 years of the league to score 100 goals in a season in the first division.
We have won many district and county titles including 4 National titles leading to the ASA 2004 Youth championships. This trophy has been in existence since 1897, no other team from the area has won a national Water polo title, and for the first time we entered the men’s Northern league to give our junior players more games and surprisingly finished 4th, we reached the cup final and beat Manchester 10-9 at Leeds in December 2004 with a team of veterans, talented juniors and some Newcastle university players.
We now need to start recruiting more young members to join the club or we will start to struggle to keep the teams going, Water polo IS FUN, great for your swimming ability and improves your fitness.
Why not come along to one of the sessions will or and speak to one of the coaches who will be happy to answer any questions you have on their club and what joining entails.
The club is small in comparison to larger city clubs and has members from six years to 17 years of age, the global is led by Mr George Carpenter who is chief coach and development officer he is also an ex-Great Britain player in his time.
His team of coaches are highly qualified in all aspects of what appalled and pride themselves on the achievement made by such a small club.
Coaches are:
Mr George Carpenter, Mr Martin Thompson, Mr S Anderson, Mr K Norman,
Lee Cooke and George Csizmazia
.