A RISING star with Dunfermline Water Polo Club is set to become their latest player to make waves in a Great Britain team.

Zara Christie, who is a pupil at Dunfermline High School, has been successful in winning a place within the junior girls’ squad following a series of successful trials.

The talented 15-year-old, who has played the sport for around four years, is Dunfermline’s under-17 goalkeeper, a position she also holds with the Scottish Water Polo Saltires team at that age group.

It was while competing at an inter-regional competition south of the border that Zara, who stays in Dunfermline, was first approached to trial for the GB squad.

Her dad, Sandy, explained to Press Sport: “We were down playing a competition in early December in Walsall, and Zara was doing quite a good job at saving all these shots.

“It was the English coach who had said to the English team manager, ‘I would like that girl to try for the GB team’.

“The next week, there was a trial with the English team in Northampton. We ended up going down; Zara gelled with the team, and everyone just got on great.

“We’ve been up and down the country four or five times. She’s been training with the English squad; what they’ve done is they’ve been getting a GB squad, and the GB squad is 90 per cent of the English team, if I’m being honest with you.

“She hit it off totally with all the English girls, and then we were down at a place called Millfield. This was one of the selections for the GB squad.

“It was over two days, and she was chosen as the number one keeper.”

In addition to that, Zara’s talent had also seen her invited to train with the 03 squad, who are around 19- and 20-years-old, before the 25 that had trained at Millfield were cut to a final pool of 13.

That junior girls’ squad will go to Czechia in around a month’s time to compete in an EU Nations Cup competition, and Sandy continued: “She’s totally excited.

“It’s been quite a thing, and it’s been quite a few trips up and down the M6, and there’s quite a few more!

“She’s over the moon. She’s been very mature about it; she’s just kind of taking it in her step, so-to-speak, at the moment.

“They (GB) do seem quite a strong team but water polo is a bigger thing in Europe than it is in Britain so they’ll need to be a strong team to hold their own out there.

“It is a great experience.”

Zara follows Niamh Moloney, a player with GB’s senior women having played previously for their under-19s, and was due to trial for the Scottish senior ladies’ team over the course of three days at Edinburgh’s Royal Commonwealth Pool, and the Peak in Stirling, at the weekend.