SA water polo women looking for best-ever result at world championships

The national women’s water polo team jetted out of Johannesburg on Thursday, confident they can achieve their best world championship result to date in Fukuoka, Japan.

Vice-captain Shakira January was part of the team that finished 13th at the 2022 edition in Budapest, which topped their 14th place in 2019 and two 15th and three 16th places before that.

“I believe we can beat that,” said the second-year psychology student at the University of Pretoria.

“Last year, in our pool, our challenge was Argentina and it was our closest game — we lost by one goal in the last seconds, so that put us out of the playoff rounds.”

South Africa went down 7-6 against Argentina, the closest the side has come to winning a pool match since they made their debut in 2009.

They face Argentina again in their final pool game on July 20 (2am South African time), after matches against powerhouse sides Greece (July 16, 10.30am) and Italy (July 18, 5am).

“If we beat Argentina this year we’re going to the playoffs and that’ll be a first for the South African ladies,” said January.

“I think we could come 11th, 12th. We’ve been training a lot.”

The team’s training camp in Johannesburg since Friday last week had gone well, said skipper Megan Sileno.

“This camp we’ve had has been awesome. We felt like a proper professional team. We’ve had two hours in the morning, three hours in the afternoon,” said the mother of two, who is headed to her sixth world championships after starting at the team’s debut in 2009.

“We’ve all had to take off work, but it’s been nice to gel and bond. It's been a good week, it really has.

“We've been tired, irritable, learning new things, getting used to each other, but we’ve got such an awesome vibe in the team. We get out the pool and it's over,” added 34-year-old Sileno, the director of water polo at St Anne’s in Hilton.

On a normal day she tries to train up to three hours. “I try to do two sessions a day if my schedule allows, especially with the two children.”

The youngest in the team is Boksburg-born goalkeeper Olufunke Gando, who turned 19 on the first day of the camp. “And I was off early to train at 7am.”

She admitted having a few butterflies before the campaign. 

“Throughout the training camp I was nervous. We had a morning session and after that I feel more excited. I’m a little nervous but I’m more excited.

“I’ve been watching other teams posting about their training on Instagram and so on. I’m excited to meet some of my idols at the world champs.”

Support independent journalism by subscribing to TimesLIVE Premium. Just R20 for the first month.