By Frankie Chee

IT WAS deja vu at the Schools National water polo competition as Raffles Institution (RI) swept both A Division titles again yesterday.

And they did it by overcoming the same opponents they met in last year's finals. Not only that, but both teams also produced a hat-trick hero at the Co-Curricular Activities Branch swimming pool at Evans Road.

Quek Xin Ping, 17, scored thrice to power the girls' team to a 6-4 win over St Andrew's Junior College (SAJC), before Rishi Shanker Pandey, 17, put the ball into the Hwa Chong Institution goal thrice to help his team win 8-2.

'Individually, SAJC's players are stronger, but we worked better as a team,' noted RI's girls' captain Teo Ling Li, 18.

Their jubilant top scorer Xin Ping agreed: 'Compared to them, we don't have the quantity. They have a lot of older players, so our younger players had to train very hard.'

In the boys' game, RI's Ng Wei Shen started the scoring in the second minute.

HCI equalised two minutes later but never really troubled the Rafflesians despite a late rally in the last quarter.

'The credit goes to my teammates, who created the goals for me,' said Rishi. 'It's not about who scores the most goals, but about how we play as a team.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times.