Dear members of Arctic Water Polo,

Thank you for being a part of Arctic Water Polo. The season has gone by so quickly, and last weekend saw the conclusion of the summer regular season. And it's now time to reflect on the weeks that have passed since October. On behalf of the Arctic Executive, I wish you all good luck with your finals matches.

Awards night

A reminder that RSVPs for awards night are now due. This year it is at a catered venue, and we would love to see you at our new event and help us support the awarding of our players with their awards. Adult and child food is available for attendees - it is for the entire club.

RSVP

Medal chances

This year we continue our strong performance and this summer we have 5 teams in contention for a medal in more than half of the divisions. Topping the table in the Opens B division, the Thundersnow (Opens B) have completed an undefeated season. Other teams competing for a medal are: the Klondikes (Opens A), Sea Monkeys (U18), Snowy Owls (U15), and Hares (U12). Good luck to these teams. Go for Gold!

A reminder that all teams play in both finals weeks - your final placing is important for club rankings. 

High Performance Manager

This season we did something innovative and new for Arctic; we introduced the role of the High Performance Manager. The focus of the role was to bring experience to our coaching methods and provide support to our volunteer parent coaches. Daniela Zapata is our first High Performance Manager, she is young and passionate about Water Polo. She currently represents NSW in her age division. She definitely has brought her experience to Arctic, organising and delivering our Wednesday night coaching. This investment has been successful and we will continue the High Performance Manager role for the future. Congratulations to Daniela, I speak for everyone at training (and generally) when I say: you are amazing.

Focus on equal participation

For the junior grades this season, we focused on equal participation. We provided team management lists to our volunteer coaches so they can ensure that players got as close to equal time in the pool as possible. Coaches were expected to give each player at least one quarter in the first half and overall provide an equal opportunity to play for every player. We will continue to develop this tool to make it easier for coaches and managers to co-ordinate their teams. Our competition format is 4x5min quarters - this task is extremely challenging and every volunteer coach did their best. 

Communication

This year we had a strategy as an executive to equally distribute the role of communicating with our members. Travers Wells focused on our website and social media. I worked with Shane Veness (Treasurer) on fiscal matters and with Mitch Whitehall (Secretary) for other enquiries. This definitely had its strengths but the diversification had its challenges. For example: our response time could easily have been improved. For seasons to come, we will be looking at developing our communication strategy.  

Team Growth

The 2015/2016 Summer season saw a growth in our opens division and a fewer number of teams in some of our junior divisions. This was unexpected. It is clear the social aspect of the sport is growing fast, and we have some work to do in junior participation. It was difficult to maintain some of the divisions (such as U10s) - we had to merge a few teams as a result. For following seasons we are also going to focus on our coaches and managers experience, and to build strong teams that return as a team each season.

Member feedback

We have received a significant amount of feedback this season from our members. The executive are grateful and are always eager to listen to your comments. We understand we have not responded in a timely way to some requests, and hopefully there is nothing outstanding. Please contact us as soon as possible if there are things still unresolved. We have had supply issues for our merchandise - which has affected every club. We have had some issues with team roster management, whether that has been due to team attendance and size or the perception of value for time spent playing in a game. There has also been mixed feedback around the culture of our club. Some parents an players want to be in a more competitive team, others want to just have fun in the water. Where possible we have a goal to mix teams with stronger and newer players. We try to accommodate when possible. We also find teams that train together improve their skill levels and perform better. We will be reviewing all feedback. If you have additional comments you would like to add, please feel free to email me.

Running this club is a learning experience, and we are all dedicated to making it bigger and better. Sometimes our ideas don’t work out - but we also *always* try new things each season to see what we can do. If we stop trying new things, we might as well stop altogether - and what we learn from our mistakes makes the club stronger in future.

FEEDBACK

Alex Mednis,

President

Arctic Water Polo Club