A local water polo sensation will be looking to capture two gold medals for two different teams at a national championship tournament later this month.
Emily Marshall, 15, will be competing with the Saskatchewan 19-and-under team at the National Championship League (NCL) Canadian championships in Montreal’s Claude-Robillard Sports Complex from May 27 to 28, but whether her 16U team will be playing there as well depends on how it does this weekend at the NCL Western Nationals in Surrey, B.C.'s Guildford Recreation Centre. Her 19U team booked their ticket for the NCL Canadian championships with a dominating performance at Western Nationals in the Guildford Recreation Centre from April 22 to 24.
“It went really well,” said Marshall, who mainly played forward for 19U Team Saskatchewan. “We were one of the teams that could have improved the most and I guess that’s what we did. We improved and showed them that we are a winning team and that we’re someone to be afraid of.”
Team Saskatchewan entered the 19U Western Nationals ranked third in the NCL Western Conference with a 10-10 record during regular season play. The club opened the tournament with an 11-8 win over Fraser Valley, who owned the second seed with a record of 11-9, before downing the last-place Edmonton Tsunami (0-20) 18-6 on the first day of competition.
The team then lost 8-6 to the first-place Pacific Storm (19-1) the morning of April 23 to end round-robin play, but battled back that evening in the quarter-finals with a 17-2 victory over the Tsunami. In the semifinal round, Team Saskatchewan defeated Fraser Valley 12-4 guaranteeing them one of two available spots at the Canadian championships, before beating the Storm 15-13 in the final on April 24.
“We were more into it,” said Marshall, noting having the boy’s 19U Team Saskatchewan squad cheering them on during the game helped pump them up. “We watched the Storm play some other teams, saw where their stronger players were and realized what we were doing wrong and fixed it.”
Marshall said the confidence gained from beating Fraser Valley and Pacific Storm will help them going into the four-team NCL Canadian championships. She said they will open up the tournament with a game against the Eastern Conference’s second-seeded Golden Horseshoe (9-9-2) with the victor earning an opportunity to compete in the gold-medal game against the winner of the Storm-CAMO (19-0-1) match.
The 16U Team Saskatchewan club, that also includes local player Taeghan Hack, will enter the Western Nationals with a 10-10 record and ranked third in the NCL Western Conference as well. Marshall said she is “almost 100 per cent certain” they’ll beat the first-place Frasier Valley (20-0) and second-place Pacific Storm (13-7) to gain a berth in the Canadian championships, meaning she’ll have double the workload in Montreal and that is fine with her.
“It’ll be interesting,” she said.
