Barbara Kendall has competed in five Olympic Games and is now the White Caps' performance coach. Photo / Michael Craig
By Bridget Tunnicliffe of RNZ
Five-time Olympian Barbara Kendall has thrown her weight behind the New Zealand women’s water polo team in their bid to qualify for the next Olympic Games.
The White Caps believe they have a golden opportunity to qualify for Los Angeles 2028, with the Olympic quota for women’s water polo increasing from 10 teams to 12.
The team narrowly missed out on Paris 2024, falling just two goals short of Olympic qualification.
Women’s water polo was only added to the Olympics in 2000, with men’s water polo on the programme since 1900. No New Zealand team have qualified for the Olympics in the sport.
Kendall competed at five Olympic Games, winning gold, silver and bronze medals in windsurfing. She is now the White Caps’ performance coach and was introduced to water polo through her two daughters.
“They started playing at school and just loved it,” she said. “There was no one at the school really managing it, so I just stepped in and ended up managing water polo for Whangaparāoa College, right up until both of them finished.
“I didn’t really know much about it, but I knew how to put a team together.”
Eldest daughter Samantha later joined the Atlantis City club in Auckland, where Kendall met White Caps head coach Angie Winstanley-Smith.
“What she was trying to achieve was a big dream with very little resource to try to get a team to the Olympic Games in Paris,” Kendall said. “There was no money, so it was pretty much a voluntary role, just building a plan and it’s taken a long time.
“She was, like, ‘Barbara, we’d love to have you on the team just supporting’ and I went, ‘Yep’.”
NZ Water Polo chief executive Jan Shearer competed at three Olympics in sailing, winning a silver medal with Leslie Egnot at Barcelona 1992.
Olympian Polly Powrie joined the White Caps a couple of years ago as team manager. Powrie is a two-time Olympic medallist, winning gold at London 2012 and silver at Rio 2016, alongside teammate Jo Aleh in the women’s 470 sailing class.
England-born Angie Winstanley-Smith represented Great Britain for 11 years, including the 2012 London Olympics, before retiring in 2014 and moving to New Zealand.
“Angie is an outstanding individual,” Kendall said. “Most people wouldn’t dedicate their life to it, it’s a real life calling.
“Then, when Jan became CEO, it was, like, ‘right, I’m in’, because Jan’s an amazing operator, and then Polly joining as well. When you have really good operators in behind a good coach, who knows what can happen, so that was why I joined.”
Kendall knows what it’s like to prepare for Olympic qualification, but that’s new territory for the White Caps squad members. Some have spent time playing in the American college system on scholarships, while some are coming from club level.
“Taking them from that level to actually what’s required when you step up into high-performance systems is quite a big jump, and some people don’t make it, because it’s relentless, it’s 24/7.
“It’s meticulous, and so many boxes need to be ticked to ensure that you are operating under a high-performance energy stream. It’s tiring and it’s really hard.”
Kendall enjoys working within a team sport.
“What a privilege to work with a group of female athletes striving to be their very best,” she said. “The dynamics are quite different, because you can have one person off and it can affect the whole team.
“They learn to understand their teammates, and what stresses them or what motivates them. They have to be able to adapt and have empathy.
“All those things you learn from a team sport, which you probably don’t learn from an individual sport, because it’s all about you, but in a team sport, you’ve got to look outside yourself a lot more.”
Kendall said she had a “million stories” she could share about the realities of high-performance sport, “based on everything I learnt in 25 years of travelling overseas, sleeping in cars, little support”.
“When you get to the end of it, you may not qualify for the Olympic Games,” she said. “You may not win a medal, but what you have learnt that has made you you, that’s priceless ... and that’s where I come in.”
Kendall’s philosophy is to grow the person, then the athlete will flourish.
“In high-performance sport, you go into pressure-cooker situations and all your fears surface, so it’s how you embrace them and learn through them. It can be a really tough journey, so understanding that is actually when the most growth occurs, and you are much stronger and resilient from those times.”
The White Caps are currently on the road, gaining valuable experience in Europe against the world’s top teams, before heading to the world aquatics championships in Singapore.
Kendall will rejoin the team there after a quick detour to watch daughter Aimee Bright compete at the 2025 iQFOiL world championships in Denmark. Bright is one of New Zealand’s top young windfoilers, a newer evolution of windsurfing.
Winstanley-Smith, who started coaching the team in 2017, appreciates that she now has a management team stacked with Olympic experience.
One of her assistant coaches is Eelco Uri, a former Dutch player, who competed at the 1996 and 2000 Olympics with the Netherlands men’s team.
Winstanley-Smith said of Kendall: “Anyone who meets Barbara, it’s impossible not to feel energised.
“She’s been to five Olympics, she works with the IOC. Ultimately, what she brings is, ‘Yes, this is high performance, but it’s fun, we choose to be here,’” she said.
“She challenges the environment, and gets us to look at each other as people and how we can connect, and how everyone is different and how we navigate that within a team, so she’s been gold in that respect for me.”
Shearer spent three years as chief executive of Snow Sports NZ, before taking charge of NZ Water Polo in 2021, when Covid was having a big impact. She is also board chairwoman of Canoe Racing NZ.
Winstanley-Smith’s first three months of communication with Shearer was over Zoom, when Auckland was in lockdown.
“She came in, and just provided a support for me and a guidance in the New Zealand high-performance environment, and her connections and ability to get stuff done is just incredible.
“Immediately, her knowledge and expertise, she came from Snow Sports and we’ve all seen the success they have had, and also Canoe Racing New Zealand, so two organisations she’s been involved with who’ve had a lot of Olympic success, I don’t think that’s by chance.”
Winstanley-Smith said Powrie was the most unassuming, laid-back person she had ever worked with.
“So level-headed, which is fantastic for me, because she balances my ADHD out, so it’s great,” she laughed.
“She just loves being involved in sport, but not for the limelight. The girls can sit down at breakfast in tournament and chat through, ‘What was the morning like before you went out to sail your last race and won gold’ – those key moments that Polly has lived that she can bring real-life experience.”
White Caps captain Jessica Milicich, 29, has been in the squad for nine years and said missing out on Paris was difficult, but it made them confident they could make it.
She said having so much Olympic experience around the team was invaluable.
“Having Angie lead our programme has been really important for us,” Milicich said. “We wouldn’t be in the position that we are today without her.
“She’s really driven the women’s programme forward in the time that she’s been head coach. I’ve never met anyone as technically capable as her.
“She understands what you’re going through in high-pressure moments, she is very calm in times of stress, she is just so valuable and we are lucky to have someone like her involved.”
Milicich said also having Powrie and Kendall in their camp filled them with confidence.
“They both came to the Doha world champs with us last year, and the impact that they had was so positive, so all of our feedback was that we wanted them to be involved moving forward.
“Barbara creates an atmosphere where she brings out the best in everyone. She is really focused on how we can perform as a group and individually at our best, so I think that is really important, because when you get to those international moments, she has so much experience and value to offer.
“Then Polly is just awesome. Having the two of them, I think we are very fortunate, and I don’t think you’d look across any other staff or team management, and have the same kind of experience or value.”
Traditionally, Europe produces strong water polo teams like Hungary, Greece and Italy. The US is strong in women’s water polo, and Australia won silver in Paris last year.
“For us to break into that upper tier, we are a little bit further away, so the more we get exposed to those kind of teams, the better,” Milicich said.
Water polo is now one of 10 recognised team sports under the High Performance Sport New Zealand programme, which has bumped up their funding.
“Singapore is one of our first world championships where we haven’t had to do much fundraising,” Milicich said. “It’s covered, but normally, it has been self-funded.
“To get to this point where we can now move forward and hopefully continue to grow the sport is really exciting.”
– RNZ