Trailing by two goals with just over a minute remaining of the Pan Pacific Youth Water Polo Festival 16&Under girls final it looked like Mikayla Gross’ NSW Blues side were going to have to settle for silver.
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But like a phoenix rising from the ashes they scored three unanswered goals to snatch a miraculous 9-8 win and return from New Zealand with the gold.
“That last minute was crazy,” Gross’ father Jason said.
A long-time player himself, and now coach, he said he’d never seen anything like it before, the Blues scoring the winning goal with four seconds on the clock.
It came from a loose pass from the Atlantis goalkeeper that the Blues had forced with the full pool press, which their coach - former Australian women’s team head coach Greg McFadden – had got them to employ in the second half.
Their triumph was all the remarkable for the fact that they were down 4-nil after less than five minutes.
Gross was in the water for the frenetic final moments and played some solid water polo over the tournament.
Playing a left hand driving role, she bagged 10 goals, and learnt a lot from the experience of playing against teams from New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and America, as well as other Australian state teams.
She was part of a strong Tamworth contingent at the biennial tournament with Lucy Hofman, Bianca Watson, Sarah Hofman playing for the NSW Country under-16 girls and Ned Hoath representing the NSW Country under-16 boys.
They placed 22nd overall while the girls finished 23rd, just behind the NSW Waratahs and NSW Combined High Schools.
Ross White was the girls coach and said they “went above and beyond”.
Their campaign got off to a “terrible” start, going down to the top New Zealand side 20-nil, but that was a rare blow-out as they won three of their eight games.
“We probably should have won two more,” White said.
“One we lost in the last 30 seconds.”
It was really a fine line for them.
They were heading into their last pool game on track to finish third, but couldn’t get the result and on goal difference ended up sixth.
Lucy Hofman captained the side and did an “excellent job” White said, adding that all three Tamworth girls played really well.
As did the side generally.
White was delighted with how they performed especially considering most of them hadn’t really been swimming since May when their pools closed, and their age.
“Our girls were aged from 13 through to 16. The majority of teams we played were all 16s,” he said.
They improved immensely over the tournament, White remarking that the comment was made that they wouldn’t have looked out of place in the NSW Blues side.
