Last year September saw the start of the annual Old Mutual/Roedean School Prestige Cup. Now in its sixth year, this has become a major event on the water polo calendar.
Ten top Gauteng schools play out for the honour of winning the prestige cup, of which the underlying heart is community service. The schools are divided into two groups with the initial round robin matches being played in September last year and January this year.
The playoffs and finals for the Old Mutual Roedean School Water Polo Prestige Cup were played on 18 February, at Roedean School (SA). The morning was dedicated to the playoffs between group A and group B. The first semi-final saw St Mary’s emerging as the victor over Crawford with a score line of 7–4. A second semi-final followed with St Stithians beating Roedean, 11–3.
Read Fin receives water polo colours
Sponsored by Old Mutual, a prerequisite for the schools competing in this tournament is to have a CSI Learn-to-Swim component. Each school has partnered with an underresourced school or community and has implemented a sustainable programme which teaches swimming and or water polo at their partnership school or community. The prize money received by the top three schools is used to develop the Learn-to-Swim programme further in their partnership school.
This year, Roedean hosted a Swim-a-Thon where, at midday, five of the partnership schools brought children from their Learn-to-Swim programme. The children swam in a relay format for a set time period. While the schools and the crowds cheered, these young swimmers swam their hearts out, loving being able to showcase their swimming skills – and the medals and certificates they subsequently received. Old Mutual further sponsored all schools that participated in the swim-a-thon.
The afternoon events kicked off at 12.45pm.
Results for places five to 10 were as follows:
- Randpark beat St Dunstan’s 11–4
- Pretoria beat Kingsmead 5–3
- St Dominic’s beat St Peter’s 21–8.
Roedean and Crawford played out for the third and fourth place and the exciting game ended with Roedean winning 11–10. In the finals, St Stithians emerged as the eventual winner, beating St Mary’s 15–6.
Final positions were as follows:
- 1st St Stithians
- 2nd St Mary’s
- 3rd Roedean
- 4th Crawford
- 5th St Dominic’s
- 6th St Peter’s
- 7th Pretoria
- 8th Kingsmead
- 9th RandPark
- 10th St Dunstans.
