Saints Water Polo Invitational 2024 - Senior Section Wrap
That’s a wrap for this year’s edition of the Saints Water Polo Invitational which once again delivered an incredible four days of college water polo. We were mostly blessed with awesome weather and based on the predictions of afternoon storms and lightlning made the decision to start one hour earlier on Sunday to ensure the safety of our players and visitors and to finish the finals! We achieved that goal and we thank our participating teams, visitors and #OneAndAll for their understaing and support of this decision.
St Stithians College has been privileged to host this tournament for the past 30 years and relishes the opportunity for our Saints Aquatics Precinct to welcome our 40 participating teams (over 560 players) and a steady stream of supporters for 144 games of top-class water polo, most importantly, giving our students the opportunity to do what they love to do. This year we welcomed thousands of guests to our College to be a part of the four day event - it was certainly our most well attended Invitational event to date - so thank you for the support!
An event like this takes a huge amount of organisation and manpower tto put together and we are grateful to #OneAndAll who played a part in the success of this year’s invitational. First and foremost, we say a big thank you to all the participants who have given it their all in the pools, we applaud them for their talent, sportsmanship and the camaraderie that they have shown both in and outside the pool. To their coaches and managers, we salute you for the hard work that you do with your teams in preparing them for events such as this as well as the duty of care that you offer to them - your dedication and commitment do not go unotcied.
Sunday offered up two hotfly contested finals, first up was the Girls' final that took place between Gauteng schools, Reddam House Bedfordview and Roedean School. It was Roedean that came out victorioius (9 - 6) being crowned gold medal winners of the 2024 edition of the event. The boys' final saw Cape Town powerhouse Bishops Diocesan College take on KwaZulu-Natal's Kearsney College. It was a tight tussle and a high scoring game with goals aplenty being matched one for one for most of the game. In the end, it was an inspired Kearsney team that were crowned the champions with a 17 -14 win in the end. Congratulations to our winners and to #OneAndAll - you certainly left if all out in the pools!

Our Saints Water Polo Invitational 2024 Girls' Section Winners - Roedean School (Gauteng)

Our Saints Water Polo Invitational 2024 Boys' Senior Section Winners - Kearsney College (KwaZulu-Natal)
Our silver medalists in the Girls' Section were Reddam House Bedfordview and bronze medalists, Herschel Girls' School (Cape Town).

Our Saints Water Polo Invitational 2024 Girls' Senior Section silver medal winners - Reddam House Bedfordview (Gauteng)

Our Saints Water Polo Invitational 2024 Girls' Senior Section bronze medal winners - Herschel School (Cape Town)
Our silver medalists in the Boys' Section were Hilton College (KwaZulu-Natat) and bronze Medals went to St John's College (Johannesburg).

The Bishops Captain and Coach receive their silver medals on behalf of the team.

The St John's Captain and Coach receive their bronze medals on behalf ot the team.
Our final presentation and closing ceremony got underway and due to the predicted storm heading our way, we opted to forgo the formalities and thank you's in order to get down to the business of the presentation, the trophy and medal hand-overs and the naming of our All Star Tournament Teams and Individual Player Awards. Unfortunately we only made it through the Girls' section bronze and silver medalists before our lightning siren activated indicating an approaching storm. With the safety and well-being of our participants and visitors being our main concern, the final portion of the prize-giving was done under cover in order to adhere to our lighting procedures and protocols, compromising our ability to get capture the beautiful award photographs we had planned, but the good news is that we completed our awards and medal handovers and paid tribute to the inspiring efforts of the tournament teams for both the girls and the boys as well as naming and celebrating our Players of the Invitational handing over the Individual Player Awards for Best Goalkeeper, Best Defender and Best Attacker of the Invitational in both the girls' and boys' sections.
For all the final placings for the Senior Boys’ and Girls' Section as well as the tournament teams, please click here:
Girls' Section: Tournament results, awards and final placings
Boys Section: Tournament results, awards and final placings

Girls' Tournament Team (see document for full details)

Boys' Tournament Team (see document for full details)

Girls' individual Player Awards (see document for full details)

Boys' Individual Player Awards (see document for full details)
Thank you to all our vendors, suppliers, and particularly our headline sponsor, CIB and all of our sponsors for the essential part that they play in making tournaments like this happen. A special word of thanks to Blistex for the sponsorship of the product and branded towels for our tournament teams and to Sir Juice for the gift packs for our Individual Player Awards. To our Chair of the Saints Water Polo Committee, Sue-Anne Stander along with her incredible group of passionate and committed water polo parents, we extend our heartfelt appreciation. To our Tournament Directors, Bruno Fernandes and Megan Betchoo and their team, a massive thanks. We invite you to have a look at our Saints Water Polo Invitational facebook page to see our heartfelt posts of thanks to all of the various sponsors, partners, vendors and service providers that have made this Invitaitonal the success that it has been.
As we didn't get to run through our 'thank you's' as part of the prize presentation ceremony, we share the MC Richard Little's notes with you to give you and idea of the countless people that worked together as a team to bring this event to fruition. This document also lists the medal winners, tournament teams and Player of the Invitational awards!
This wraps up this year’s Invitational.
We look forward to welcoming the participants and supporters to our Saints Water Polo Invitational Senior Invitational 2025 (date still to be confirmed) – see you there!
To #OneAndAll that participated, supported and were a part of delivering this event – thank you. To our traveling teams, travel home safely. Until next year…
Saints Water Polo Invitational 2024 Senior Section - Highlights Reel




































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