North Harbour currently has many of our Senior Men's and Women's players developing their games and showing their skills in some of the best water polo competitions around the world. One of these players is Andrei Soldatovic. Andrei is a former Westlake student, and a current North Harbour Senior Men's player and New Zealand Junior Representative who is playing in the Serbian Super League for a season. Here it is from the man himself:

Tell us about your club and the league?

I am currently playing at the Club Stari Grad, located in Belgrade Serbia. We play in the Serbia Super League, with teams such as Novi Beograd, Crvena Zvezda and Partizan. This competition is a professional one and some would argue it is the toughest league in the world.

What has your schedule been like since you arrived?

I've been here for a bit over 2 months, the training schedule has been a little tough to get use to, having about 8-10 trainings a week with some gyms in between, however it's definitely gotten easier over time. I've definitely been enjoying it, training has been fun majority of the time(when we're not doing swim sets) and the weather was amazing the first month and a bit but has now started to cool down into winter so we'll see how that fares.

How has your team fared in the competition so far?

We're currently 1 win and two losses in the league, winning out first game agaisnt Proleter in penalties. We then went onto play agaisnt Novi Beograd which was the team was came 2nd in the champions league the past 2 years and last by a decent margin. Then we lost by 2 to Vojvodina in our latest match after being tied going into the fourth.

And how would you summarise your experience so far?

Overall the games have been decent, I'm still figuring out how everything is being played here and the style of waterpolo but the team and the coaching staff has all been really friendly and supportive so I hope to excel soon enough with a bit more adaptation and understanding.

We are incredibly proud of you Andrei, keep up the good work!

Article added: Thursday 19 October 2023