The 50th SWPSA IPT is going to be huge - it wasn't always that way

 The 50^th South African Schools Water Polo tournament takes place next week. It will be played at eight school pools around Johannesburg. And it will be massive - there are 10 sections, involving over 2000 players and several hundred officials.

That’s very different to what it must have been like in 1975 when the 1^st tournament was held at Ellis Park. I wasn’t involved back then – my first SA Schools was in 1981, in Bloemfontein - but the provinces and people involved hadn’t changed much by then.

It was an U19 boys tournament at first and the competing provinces were: Transvaal, Northern Transvaal, Eastern Transvaal, Natal, Western Province, Eastern Province, Border and Free State. Natal won it just about every year.

I was sent to the 1981 tournament as manager of the Transvaal B team by Buddy Herd – the headmaster of Athlone Boys’ High, who basically ran things among the Joburg schools back then.

At that tournament I met the men who ran the game. Some of them moved on soon afterwards (Buddy Herd retired the next year) and others went on to make deep inroads in the game at school level.

Dredging my memory, I recall the following pioneers of the SA Schools tournament. Almost all of them have passed on now, leaving me as a rather patchy recorder of those early days.

The chairman of what was called the South African Schools Water Polo Association was Johan Terblanche. He was also the chairman of SA Schools swimming. The ties between swimming and polo were strong back then, but the relationship was not a happy one – not much has changed in that regard in the last 50 years.

His sidekick was Nico Lamprecht of DHS and Natal. He was a water polo man and actually ran things. His involvement was to continue for many years and it’s fair to say that he became a legend. He is still alive although I’m told he is struggling with poor health.

There were a number of other, compared to me, older men in charge. They were all prominent water polo men in their cities. Ken Kuiper from Northern Transvaal wasn’t a teacher, but he was a coach and referee; Karel Elferink From Eastern Province was a leading figure in water polo down there; Chris Waller from Western Province was headmaster of Tableview High School and, I recall, an advocate of girls polo at a time when very few other even knew it was being played; Tess Uren kept the game going for many years at schools level in Eastern Transvaal, a water polo powerhouse that never had a strong interschool structure; the 1981 tournament was organised for Free State by Abrie Pepler and Russell Keet, both of whom moved to East London later, where Russell went on to head a sporting family dynasty; the Border men in Bloemfontein in 1981 were Mike Boy and Charl Wessels, both teachers who went on to serve the game for many more years.

I was thrown into running the association in Joburg when Buddy Herd suddenly retired for medical reasons, and I was involved for the next 16 years. Nico was a constant presence in that time, as was Alan Burt, who ran the refereeing side. Ian Melliar started refereeing soon afterwards and was to become another selfless, long-serving, presence around the game.

There is, of course a long list of men and women who have got this tournament to its 50^th year. The 2025 tournament is a very different beast to the 1975 one and the current organisers are brilliant. Those who started it off, and those that nudged it ahead along the way, shouldn’t be forgotten, however. Along with those mentioned above, here are few others who were involved in my time:

The Zimbabweans, some of whom later moved South and carried on their work here: Fred Wilson, Piet van Tonder, Peter Phillips.

Alan Footman was the Western Province coach in the early days, he was a constant presence, and one of the great characters of the game.

Brian Daley coached the Eastern Transvaal team for years, and put his son Simon into the team as a 13 year-old, and watched him grow into one of South Africa’s greats.

Dave Pitcairn, who started off in Joburg with me and then moved to Cape Town where he was instrumental in waking the sleeping giant that is Western Province schools water polo. His work was carried on by the Schoolings, Doug and Norma, who took the province to another level.

Steven la Marque was a player at that 1981 tournament in Bloemfontein. He went on to throw himself into coaching and was to become possibly the most prominent administrator of the game in the recent past.

I’ll be remembering them next to the pools in Joburg next week. Their legacies and spirits will be looming large.