Rhiannon Foulds, a Year 11 student at Woodham Academy, has been selected for the junior Great Britain Waterpolo squad.
Rhiannon has swum from an early age and started playing for Sedgefield Waterpolo Club trained by George Carpenter. This still remains her home team and she currently trains with them three times a week, whilst balancing her academic studies alongside it.
However, even though Rhiannon is only 16 years of age, she has also been playing National League waterpolo for Sheffield ladies team, though this year she is training with Leeds. It is from playing in a National League tournament that Rhiannon was first spotted by a GB scout and invited to join their development squad, which she has been a part of for the last two years. Through the development squad she has gone on to represent Wales in the Celtic Tri-Nations, where she was awarded prizes for most valuable player and top scorer of the tournament.
Hard work and dedication has paid off and Rhiannon recently found out that she has been selected for the junior U17 squad for the Holland tournament in February. Not content to sit back and relax, her aim now is to continue to strive for selection for the European Championships team in Hungary later this year. This means that she must continue to train hard and show improvement in speed trials, ball control, leg strength, shooting height and dry land training.
Mrs Hall, Head of PE at Woodham Academy, said: “We would like to congratulate Rhiannon on this fantastic achievement.
Her obvious talent and dedication to the sport has gained her the success that she rightly deserves and we would like to wish her all the best in her future Waterpolo achievements”.
