Stingers Squad Announced

More than half of the Stingers squad selected to play in the FINA Women’s Water Polo World Super Final from 2-6 November are NSW Institute of Sport (NSWIS) scholarship holders.

Eight NSWIS athletes including Zoe Arancini, Hayley Ballesty, Bronte Halligan, Sienna Hearn, Matilda Kearns, Genevieve Longman, Amy Ridge and Ruby Swadling are on their way to Spain after the Stingers won the FINA Women’s Water Polo World League Intercontinental Cup in March and earned their place in the super finals.

With just under two years to go until the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Aussie Stingers Head Coach Paul Oberman said the super finals will provide a great opportunity to bring the squad together to play world class opponents.

“We are excited to once again have our Aussie Stingers compete against the best teams in the world at the WLSF. This provides our squad the opportunity to come together and get quality competition under our belt as we continue to build towards Paris 2024.

“With many of our players currently gaining valuable experience playing for professional clubs across Europe and at college in the USA, we will use the FINA World Super Finals to also have common training with both the USA (2022 world champions) and The Netherlands (2022 world championship bronze) at the Dutch Training Centre in Zeist,” Paul said.

The USA will head into the super final as favourites, the reigning Olympic and world champions, with European heavy weights set to feature among top eight nations that will take part. In previous editions, every team has made the quarter finals. This time every round game result will count as the top 2 from each group goes through to the semi finals.

Group A – Canada, Italy, The Netherlands, USA

Group B – Australia, Hungary, New Zealand and Spain.

“The USA are always the ones to beat but you can be sure the Spanish on their home soil will also be a tough opponent. There will be no easy games and we open our pool play with Hungary, whom we share a healthy rivalry. We will not face 6000 screaming Hungarian fans this time but playing the world championships silver medalists will be another high-pressured experience.

“It will be the first time to have our full strength squad together since the world championships which will be a great way to round out the 2022 international season,” he said.

The FINA Women’s Water Polo World Super Final will be held in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain from 2-6 November 2022 – click here for more details.

Article courtesy of Water Polo Australia