NZ women’s water polo team pursue Olympic history after drought

The coach of New Zealand’s women’s water polo team thinks they’re fitter than they’ve ever been.

That’s despite not playing an international Test since December 2019, as they embark on the world championships in the sport’s spiritual home of Hungary later this month.

The reason Angie Winstanley-Smith, an Olympian for Great Britain at London 2012, is more confident in her team despite the inexperience is because they’ve been given a “game-changing” rare funding boost.

Winstanley-Smith said simply getting access to facilities most high-performance athletes might take for granted has been a monumental shift.

“It's elements of our game that traditionally we've fallen over a little bit; the strength or the fitness,” Winstanley-Smith told 1News.

The boost of $100,000 a year up until the Paris 2024 Olympic Games from High Performance Sport New Zealand has meant the women’s national programme is no longer solely funded by the players themselves, as it often has been in the past.

Winstanley-Smith said it's given the side more than just a financial lift.

“Even though a lot of our game is still self-funded and the girls still have to pay a fair amount to be able to go to the world championship, it just gives us that little bit of hope that things are really changing for us and that we can achieve the dream of making it to the Olympic Games,” she said.

Jessica Milicich, Aotearoa’s goalkeeper since 2016, agrees there’s been a shift in momentum.

“We're together pretty much every day and with the funding it's just that extra boost that we needed,” she said.

“It's something that we've been hoping for, everyone, ever since we started playing, and for water polo to finally get this recognition it's just a testament I think to all of the girls' hard work, the coaches, everyone behind the scenes to finally know that we're getting recognised and we're moving up in the world,” teammate Emily Nicholson added.

The New Zealanders have been drawn in a pool with Brazil, Kazakhstan, and Australia at the world championships. It’s a favourable line up; Brazil and Kazakhstan will be their best bets, with women’s water polo powerhouse the Aussie Stingers in fine form.

“I think this is a good group of people that've worked really hard to be here so we're all really aligned on [the fact that] maybe this isn't the big end goal; we're aiming for 2024 so this world championships is just a stepping stone on that path,” Milicich said.

Australia has won two bronzes since claiming gold at the Sydney 2000 Olympics - the first time a women’s competition was held at the Games - despite men making a debut an entire century earlier.

New Zealand has never featured in either gender.

The fight for equality continues, with 12 men’s teams and 10 women’s (increased from 8 at Rio) playing since Tokyo.

New Zealand has placed 12th at every world championships it has played at since 2005 bar one, meaning it’s nipping at the heels of Olympic teams.

There are several possible pathways to Paris: essentially, they need to beat Australia in a qualification series; hope Australia qualifies through a top placing at a world championships or league, leaving the Oceania spot open for New Zealand; or gain a top placing at an Olympic qualification tournament.

The New Zealanders are training hard for any scenario.

“Our mission as a group of young women is to make our mark on the world stage and change water polo back home for everyone else,” Winstanley-Smith said.

“We talk about being brave and being courageous, and not being afraid to go after the game and play our game and not sit back and wait, so I'm really excited to see what we can achieve.”

The Kiwi side will be stepping into the unknown at the world championships with no international tests since 2019, but the event in Hungary won’t be entirely unfamiliar. Three players and both coaches remain from the team when the worlds was last held in Budapest in 2017, and there are only a small handful of international debutants since their previous outing two and a half years ago.

What they’ve lost in experience through the pandemic as a national outfit, they’ve gained individually in the prestigious American college system.

Five players have just come off the back of seasons for US university sides, with two – Emily Nicholson [Fresno State] and Morgan McDowall [Hawaii] – named in All-America teams representing the top 24 players in the competition adorned with Olympians from all over the world.

Malia Josephson [Wagner] was selected among the wider group of 80 top athletes, while Nicholson was given a nod as the second-best centre-forward in the competition.

“Any time a Kiwi is recognised over in the States, again it just gives New Zealand water polo some more morale going into games that we can compete with anyone,” Nicholson said.

In the build-up to the world championships, New Zealand will blow out the cobwebs against the French national side, Canada’s university team and the Netherlands juniors in a four-nations tournament in France. Then it’s on to Budapest for training, before their first match against Brazil at the world champs on June 20.

“Everyone's really excited and I think this is a good opportunity for us to really achieve something special,” Milicich said before departing last Sunday.

Regardless of the result at worlds, the sport is hoping it’s on the up after being gutted by the pandemic.

One of new chief executive Jan Shearer’s first tasks in the job was coping with the disestablishment of three roles in the minority sport’s small Auckland office last year as it struggled with a lack of revenue.

“One of our main income streams is from the events that we run, and of course there was no events, or very few events, over two or three years so that really decimated our income streams and caused the sport to wind right down,” she said.

The former sailor who went to three Olympics is no stranger to the challenges of a high-performance environment and was pivotal in getting the women’s side crucial funding.

“We put in a really substantial submission and that yielded the 100 grand so that was pretty good, were pretty happy with that,” she said.

“We heard about that in December and it has literally been all go, because then we're formulating the squad, the programme, mapping out a pathway and choosing events we're going to.”

She admits water polo is in a “reset and rebuild” phase, but is hopeful a positive result will spur players on from FlippaBall through to national athletes.

“We want the athletes to have enjoyable experiences, and so that in itself will promote the sport and make people want to come and play it and stay in the sport.”

The FINA world championships are being played from June 20 to July 3.