Trinity School has two alumni – one a former pupil, the other currently in the Sixth Form – playing for Great Britain’s senior women’s team in the water polo World Cup in Berlin this week.
World Cup players: Kathy Rodgers, the GB women’s team captain (right), and Lucy Bullock in Berlin this week
Lucy Bullock and team captain Kathy Rodgers were both called up for the squad for the two-day tournament which will determine Britain’s standings ahead of the European championship qualifiers next month.
Water polo’s a tough old game, and Britain’s had a tough couple of days, losing all three of their group games, with a 15-12 defeat to hosts Germany last night probably their best display.
They face a lunchtime game today against Ukraine to decide seventh and eighth place in the tournament (click here for live feed webcast from 1pm UK time).
Trinity’s well-known for their prowess on the rugby field – their first XV winning the English national schools’ cup at Twickenham in 2022 and losing in the final in March – but in water polo they have extraordinary strength in depth.
Sean King, who played for Britain at the 2012 London Olympics, is Trinity’s head of aquatics. In the past few weeks, teams from the £20,000 per year independent school in Shirley have…
- won the English Schools’ boys’ under-18s national title
- won the ESSA boys’ under-15s national title
- finished in the top six at the girls under-18s ESSA national finals
- while their under-13 boys play in their national finals at Northampton School on May 16
Such outstanding success has helped players such as Bullock and Rodgers reach the heights of the game nationally, and internationally.
Rodgers, who was a pupil at Trinity from 2015 to 2017, is now a professional water polo player based with a club in Greece, something she is combining with her dual Master studies at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Manchester. From school, Rodgers’ prowess in the pool had won her a scholarship to Michigan, one of the top water polo colleges in the United States.
That’s the kind of route that Bullock appears to be taking now, after accepting a four-year sports scholarship of her own at San Diego State University, where she will study Psychology.
Bullock has been playing water polo since she was 12, and was a driving force behind the formation of a girls’ team at Trinity when she joined the school in 2021.
“I got into water polo because I did competitive swimming and wanted a change that focused more on teamwork,” she told her school’s comms team when her scholarship came through.
“I loved how it gave me the opportunity to work in a team and combine ball skills from netball with swimming, which were my two favourite sports.”
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