ABOUT US

Who We Are:

The STAGS Water Polo Academy is a newly formed high performance water polo club located at the Reddam House Constantia Indoor Aquatic Centre.  

As a club, our mission is to promote and facilitate player growth, develop basic skills and reinforce player confidence at all age groups. Our high performance program seeks to guide players of all age groups to an elite level of match play through our four pillars of performance:

1. Strength 

2. Fitness

3. Basic Skills 

4. Match Play 

At STAGS, our players are divided into 4 Clubs based on age: 

Our Junior Club (U9 to U11 players) focuses on building the fundamental of water polo and ensures that the players have lots of fun doing so. Our primary focus of this age group is to ensure that players have a good start to their water polo journey and develop the right basic skills to build on as they grow. 

Our Intermediate Junior Club (IJC) (U12 and U13) seeks to build on the basic skills taught at the Junior Club, while simultaneously focusing on position specific strength and conditioning  and high intensity match play.

Our Intermediate Senior Club (ISC) (U14 and U15) seeks to further build on the development taught at the IJC. At this point, we are looking to focus specifically on match play. We believe that, at this level, coordinated movements within a team environment should go hand in hand with the development of individually focused skills and fitness. We look to place athletes predominantly into a team environment setting and focus on teaching them to work with/off one another. Simulated match play is a major focus at the ISC level. 

Our Senior Elite Club (SEC) (U16 to U19) is the pinnacle of our high performance program.  This program aims to push players towards high performance water polo by increasing the amount of time players practice each week. Weekly training sessions will focus on mastering water polo strength, fitness and basic skills. Weekend sessions will have players engage in match play scenarios and scrimmage matches. We aim to master fitness, basic skills and match play scenarios at the SEC level 

The STAGS Training Methodology:

Strength

We see strength and physical conditioning and a fundamental pillar of elite water polo. Often overlooked or trained incorrectly, The STAGS Academy seeks to educate our players how to do strength training correctly and how to use strength training to gain a competitive edge 

Fitness

Another fundamental aspect of becoming an elite athlete is a superior fitness level. At STAGS, we aim to improve both cardiovascular fitness levels (through quality swim sets and high intensity drills) and improve our players 'water polo fitness' (or our players ability to maintain a high level of play for longer durations).  

Basic Skills

We coaches, we often encounter the notion that, the older a player gets, the less basic skills training is needed in their training regime. At STAGS, we see basic skills training as a fundamental pillar of elite water polo from out Junior Club, right up to our Senior Elite.    

Match Play

One of the defining pillars of the STAGS Academy is our high volume of match play drills, scenarios and scrimmage sessions. We dedicate a large amount of time to match play scenarios and focus on the roles of the specific positions in the game.  Playing at a high intensity for longer periods of time helps to increase a players 'water polo fitness,' it allows players to become confident in specific positions and presents the opportunity for players to practice specific scenarios that they might find themselves in during a high pressure game. 

"In order to become a high intensity player, you need to play at a high intensity"