Canoe Club finishes the year with a tournament

Like most sports clubs the last 2 years have been dominated by complying to ever changing Covid rules.

National and regional leagues have still not yet resumed. However, since returning to Monday club nights in Penrith Pool, numbers have returned to pre covid levels. One benefit is that the club now has more pool time on a Monday evening, so has organized the club sessions to encourage more people to try the sport of canoe polo and also allow development of existing member’s skills.

We have a new group of coaches on the way to becoming qualified and we have set up a women only session where testosterone is banned and a beginners session where we concentrate on kayaking skills and having fun, as well as two levels of canoe polo skills sessions.

The Christmas social and presentation evening was held at the start of December, so it was decided to mark the last pool session of the year with a club tournament. Everyone who signed up was split into teams with equal range of ability.

However, no plan accounts for those who turn up without signing up and those who don’t turn up, but everyone played in a team. Team captains (A team players) were not allowed to shoot at goal, encouraging participation of all abilities in the team. Once we’d calmed down the adrenalin of the teenage players, the tournament was played in good spirits. This was the first time a lot of members had ever played in any sort of tournament and everyone seemed to enjoy it, asking if we could run it more often.

Some teams encouraged their youngsters better than others, so the actual winning team was not important, but the top goal scorer out of the newcomers was Ewan Wallace closely followed by Ed Stables.

If you fancy giving the sport a go, look for Penrith Canoe Club on Facebook, look at the website, email us directly at info@penrithcanoeclub.co.uk or come to Penrith Pool on a Monday evening from 6.30pm to 9.30pm.