Sailing greats steer water polo towards LA

Newsroom

3 days ago

Tightly tucked behind a café at the Sir Owen G Glenn National Aquatic Centre is the understated home of water polo in New Zealand. Blink and you miss it.
But behind the hard-to-find front door on Auckland's North Shore, there's a hive of activity powered by some serious sporting pedigree – including three Kiwi women who've won Olympic medals on top of the water, not in it.
Sailors, who are leading the charge to make Olympic water polo history.
Jan Shearer, Olympic silver medallist in the 470 dinghy at Barcelona 1992, is now the CEO of Water Polo NZ. Polly Powrie, who won 470 gold and silver in the 2012 London and 2016 Rio Olympics, is their high performance manager.
And Barbara Kendall, boardsailing's Olympic triple medallist, is the performance coach of the White Caps – the new moniker for the New Zealand women's water polo team.
Right now, Powrie is in Singapore with the side, who take on Italy in their opening game of the world championships on Friday night. Kendall, who's been in Denmark watching her windfoiling daughter Aimee Bright finish 15th in the iQFOIL world championships, will join the team this weekend. Shearer is minding the fort at home.
Of the three, only Powrie has ever played water polo before – a brief dabble back in high school. Both Kendall's daughters played the sport, with the eldest, Samantha, taking up a college scholarship in water polo in the US.
But the three women believe they bring a wide-ranging skillset from their sailing days – from travelling the world on little-to-no funding, to staying calm under pressure and unwavering self-belief.
'It's the belief that it's possible, to every day keep working towards your goal and you'll get there,' Shearer says. 'There's no silver bullet or magic wand.
'The goal right now is to make it to the Los Angeles Olympics and that would be a huge milestone for this sport. If you're a sailor, an Olympic medal would be the goal. But for water polo right now, just getting there is our first target.'
Jan Shearer (right) and Leslie Egnot with their 1992 Olympic silver medals in the 470. Photo: supplied
These world champs are the start of the White Caps' mission to make history. No New Zealand team – women or men – has ever played at an Olympics.
The women came within two goals of qualifying for the Paris Games, but their chances have been boosted for Los Angeles, with the women's field increased from 10 to 12 nations – a tick for equality with the men.
As the New Zealand team's long-time head coach, Angie Winstanley-Smith, puts it, the expansion could be a game-changer for women's water polo here.
'We were effectively the 11th-ranked team for Paris. This will hopefully inspire not only our current squad members but also the next generation to keep pushing, keep believing,' she says. These world championships are the first step.
Five-time Olympian Kendall was brought on board by her old sailing team-mate Shearer, after offering to help with the White Caps players.
'It was primarily to help the girls in pressure situations, managing their anxiety and nerves, because it was all new to them,' Shearer says.
Barbara Kendall was recognised as an Olympian for Life in Paris last year. Photo: supplied
Once Kendall ended her hugely successful sailing career, the IOC member forged a new vocation empowering athletes.
'It's about knowing what the level of tension needs to be so you can lift, but not over the top so everyone stays calm and focused,' Kendall says. 'It's about keeping an eye on communications, fatigue, food, sleep, hydration, mindsets, team dynamics and all the wobbles that happen when everyone is under pressure.
'I tell them lots of stories – most of them funny – about my days competing, and I try to keep it real. High performance sport is so intense, and these girls have dedicated years to this sport, living overseas playing in professional leagues – making around 8000 euros a year – with a dream of maybe making the Olympics one day. It's a huge sacrifice.
'They get to a certain age and say 'Well, is this really worth it?' And if they can make it to the Olympics, well then it is worth it.'
Kendall sees it as a privilege she's now part of a team sport 'where every person counts'.
'In an individual sport like boardsailing, there's only one of you in the field of play, so the results hang on you. So it's nice to work with a team of girls who are all on the same mission,' she says. 'I didn't really have that, there weren't a lot of girls around.
'It's also a privilege to be a mentor to these young women and feel they can approach me and talk to me about anything. You do it to make a difference, to influence these girls' lives for the positive. And I know Jan and Polly feel exactly the same.'
Shearer was the first to join Water Polo NZ in 2021. After 20 years as a mechanical design engineer – and sailor – she switched to sports administration, working as CEO of Snow Sports NZ and serving as chair of Canoe Racing NZ.
'When I came into water polo, the organisation was probably three or four months from going bust. There were some challenging things that needed to be done – a reduction in staff, shutting down contracts, leaving our premises; paring it right back,' she says.
But things looked up when High Performance Sport NZ introduced its Aspirational Fund in 2022 to broaden the sports it invested in, and water polo suddenly received $85,000 a year. 'It was a small amount of money but an acknowledgment that water polo could do something. It kickstarted our journey with the women's team,' Shearer says.
Polly Powrie (left) and Jo Aleh on their way to silver at the Rio Olympics.
The sport then took the opportunity to employ a young female leader through the HSPNZ residency programme, and Powrie – who'd been operations manager at Canoe Racing NZ – joined the team.
'I was keen to get back into sports admin after the birth of my second daughter,' says Powrie, who also managed Team New Zealand's crew in the Women's America's Cup last year. 'I'd heard about the residency programme and thought this role could be a good opportunity to experience and learn from a team sport.
'It's been interesting to try to apply my experiences of high performance sport into the water polo context and the complexity of team sports.'
Her experience as a high performance athlete was what water polo desperately needed, Shearer says.
'When you've got a sport that's quite immature in the performance space, you can't just drop in a high performance programme because there's so much to it. It's a 10-year journey to build a programme like this.
'We had some athletes playing overseas in college and for European clubs, who've been exposed to the high performance daily training environment. But the rest haven't.
'We're never going to have that kind of daily training environment year round, because we don't have the pool space in New Zealand; we don't have the depth of coaches or enough funding. It's not only difficult to implement, but also to educate and explain when the sport's never been at that level.
'So bringing in someone like Polly, and then Barbara, has been amazing.'
The White Caps have also benefitted from the high performance knowledge of Dutch men's Olympian, Eelco Uri, who's in Singapore as the New Zealand team's assistant coach; and the athletes' voice leader, Frankie Snell, a Kiwi who played water polo for Great Britain at the 2012 Olympics.
For many years, Angie Winstanley-Smith has been one of the only female coaches at the water polo world championships.
Winstanley-Smith was also a British Olympian in London, who played professional water polo in Europe, before moving to New Zealand. She took up the role as the women's national coach in 2017, and the team has climbed up the world rankings ever since.
But it's only in the last four years she's been contracted by Water Polo NZ – all while holding down the role of director of sport at Diocesan School for Girls.
'We've been so fortunate to have Angie, who's passion is unrelenting, who's driven and has the commitment and the knowledge of what it takes to be one of the top teams in the world,' Shearer says. 'We've all worked together to build this programme, but it wouldn't exist if it wasn't for her.'
In a sport that's traditionally male-dominated, two women are now at the forefront of Water Polo NZ's board of directors. Alex Howieson, an experienced corporate and governance leader, is the board chair and her deputy is Megan Thompson, a former White Cap who's been Winstanley-Smith's assistant coach.
The White Caps have a blend of experienced players like captain and goalkeeper Jessica Milicich, who's been in the squad for nine years and Morgan McDowall, who was the top goalscorer of the 16 nations at last year's world championships, as well as newcomers like Holly Dunn, a freshman at the University of California, Berkley.
In the past few weeks, they played tournaments in Hungary and France before arriving in Singapore. Kendall was with the White Caps at the world championships in Doha last year, where they finished ninth (missing a spot in the quarterfinals after losing to Canada 14-12 cost them a ticket to Paris).
'In Doha, we had big dreams, but we just weren't good enough,' she says. 'We didn't have the depth that was needed to be firing for a whole game. And now we do. So it's up to the girls now, really.'