Stirling sides show prowess at water polo opener

Stirling’s water polo players demonstrated their prowess in the pool when both boys’ and girls’ teams reached the finals of the Buffalo City preseason tournament hosted by Merrifield at the weekend.

The girls’ squad took the main accolades with an impressive string of results, defeating Merrifield, Clarendon and Hudson Park to secure their place in the final.

In the tournament decider, they came up against Clarendon once again and maintained their good form with a 6-1 victory.

The boys’ team qualified for the final by defeating Selborne third and Pearson, but then went down in a tight encounter with Selborne second.

After regulation time, the score was 3-3. Selborne held their nerve in the penalty shoot-out to take it 3-2.

• In the swimming pool, Leigh Jonkers was selected to represent Border at the Eden Prestige Inter District gala in Oudtshoorn.

Liam Prime competed in the Nelson Mandela Bay Open Water Champs over 3km and achieved a season best time of 44:09 and second position.

He will now prepare for the SA Nationals taking place in March.

• Angler Kirsty Sellers has been selected to represent Border in the women’s rock and surf nationals.

• On the cricket field, Stirling had some interesting results when they came up against East London rivals Selborne.

The first team took on Selborne second and Chad Clark-Evans continued with the good form he displayed in the Union High Festival.

He claimed 3/10 as Selborne were dismissed for 55, with Ayabulela Dlutu (3/14) and Dylan Gradwell (2/10) also contributing well with the ball.

Clark-Evans then top-scored with 73 in Stirling’s response of 126.

Selborne reached 42/4 in their second innings, giving Stirling a win on the first innings.

There was a thrilling finish to Stirling second’s match against Selborne third after the Selbornians were dismissed for 75.

They then bowled out Stirling for exactly the same total for the game to end in a tie.

In the remaining matches, the Selborne U14B and U15B sides took control to win fairly comfortably.

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