Junior National Women’s Water Polo Preparing for Action

LOS ALAMITOS, CALIF., June 29. THE newly announced Women's Junior National Water Polo Team will splash down against New Zealand for their first official competition on July 15 at the USA Water Polo National Training Center in Los Alamitos, Calif. The game against the New Zealand Junior National Team will wrap up a three-day training camp to prepare the young team for two weeks of intense competition in Europe.

"Almost everyone is new on the Junior National Team this year," said Junior National Team Head Coach Kyle Utsumi. "We want to fall in the footsteps of success that our Junior team has had in the past. Our trip to Europe will be a great opportunity because the U.S. team will be competing against the best Junior Teams in the world during a two week span."

Following the camp in Southern California, 15 of the 17 athletes will travel to Greece. In Athens, they will compete in the Pythia Cup against Greece, Australia and Germany from July 21-23. From there, the team will travel to Italy to compete in the Citta di Rapallo on July 27-30 against Italy, Russia, Hungary, Netherlands and Australia. This trip will mark the first time the U.S. Junior National Women's Team has competed in Europe since 1999. Of the 17 women who made the Junior National Training Team, six were chosen based on their performance at the National Team Open Tryouts in May.

"Open tryouts were a huge success for the Women's National Team program this year. Nearly one third of the Junior National Travel Team was chosen based on the skills we saw at open tryouts and the training camps," said Women's
Senior National Team Head Coach Guy Baker. "Each of the athletes selected showed many characteristics of becoming strong international players."

2006 WOMEN'S JUNIOR NATIONAL TEAM

Darby Anderson (Coto de Caza, CA/UC Berkeley 2010)
Phoebe Champion (Palo Alto, CA/Princeton 2010)*
Forel Davies (Carlsbad, CA/USC 2010)*
Addison Doud (Laguna Beach, CA/ASU 2010)
Caroline Frost (Saline, MI/Michigan 2009)*
Brittany Fullen (San Clemente, CA/UCLA 2009)
Tanya Gandy (San Diego, CA/UCLA 2009)
Amber Oland (Santa Ana, CA/Foothill HS 2007)
Grace Reynolds (Tustin, CA/Cal 2010)*
Stephanie Schnugg (Alamo, CA/Cal 2009)
Lauren Silver (Seal Beach, CA/Stanford 2009)
Jessica Steffens (Danville, CA/Stanford 2009)
Michelle Stein (Palm Desert, CA/USC 2009)*
Amanda Tipton (Sunnyvale, CA/UCSB 2009)
Melissa Wheeler (Newport Beach, CA/Cal 2009)
Jillian Stapf (Hudsonville, MI/Cal State Northridge 2010)***
Priscilla Orozco (Commerce, CA/Montebello HS 2007)**

*Athletes chosen based on open tryout performances.
**Athletes only attending the training camp with New Zealand.

WOMEN'S JUNIOR NATIONAL TEAM SCHEDULE:
July 15-17: Training camp with New Zealand JNT (Los Alamitos)
July 21-23: Pythia Cup, Greece (GRE, USA, AUS, GER)
July 27-30: Citta di Rapallo, Italy (ITA, USA, RUS, HUN, NED, AUS)

Name*

Email*

Welcome to our community. We invite you to join our discussion. Our community guidelines are simple: be respectful and constructive, keep on topic, and support your fellow commenters. Commenting signifies that you agree to our Terms of Use