Blog
Spring is Approaching...?
The weather is finally showing some hints of spring after the coldest winter in 31 years (with the average UK temperature between December and February being 1.51C), and I for one have felt it's been a long winter! We still have a backlog of fixtures waiting to be played, but hopefully this milder weather we've had this week isn't going to be followed by a deluge of rain. Until this year, I don't think I'd fully appreciated just how much impact the weather makes to sport!
The main thing that's gone on since my last blog is Varsity. The tournament took place last weekend and although the weather rather tried to throw a spanner in the works, everything except rugby went ahead in some form or another. The 18 hours straight of rain that fell on Friday caused the River Ouse to break its banks and 22 Acres to become water-logged. This caused a bit of a headache to try and sort out contingency plans for rowing and football.
Despite the best efforts of the weather, the sport went really well over the weekend and York dominated across the board, winning the event with a comfortable margin. Some highlights must include the Men's Senior 8s rowing (that took place indoor in the Tent in the form of an 8km relay on the ergos amidst an electrifying atmosphere) which York won by a mere 5m, which is the equivalent of one pull. The climbing was fantastic in it's first year in the competition, and was of course was helped by the three York victories. There were some photo finishes in the Swimming, which was the first event York St John managed to claim a few points in. The Men's 2nds Basketball was perhaps the closest event of the weekend, with York clinching the victory 54-53.
The cup was presented by York's VC, Professor Brian Canton, after some impressive performances from Gymnastics, Trix and the York St John Kats performance and dance troupes. Then the weekend concluded with the Varsity Invasion to town, which was enjoyed by students from both institutions after a successful sporting weekend which saw over 800 students competing. I just hope that my successor will keep Varsity in the calendar, even if the scoreline was perhaps not as close as it could have been.
Aside from Varsity, I've been continuing work towards improving the current York Sport/Sports Centre membership structure, although this is still unfortunately proving harder than hoped. I will be focussing a lot of time on this over the Easter break and hoping to reach a better alternative for next year.
The York Sport Treasurer, Rosamund Wood, and I have also spent a bit of time working out how we are going to allocate club grants next year. We will be taking membership sizes into account as well as the expenditure of each club and their use of the Sports Centre. The clubs need to submit their grant applications by week 3 next term, which we hope will ensure that there is enough time before the end of term to allocate grants and iron out any problems that arise.
Roses preparation is also well underway with the timetable still being re-jigged to try and accommodate all the exams that are going on over the weekend. However, it seems like more things are slotting into place and even though York will be weakened by exams, I am hopeful that we will still be able to head across the Pennines as a strong contingent and that everyone will enjoy the weekend. Obviously bring the Carter James trophy back to York with us would be a fantastic end to the weekend!
I also helped out in YUSU's Employability Campaign - "We are Golden", which was masterminded by Charlie Leyland and Rhianna Kinchin. We spent a lot of time getting people to think about their employability potential and had plenty of people sign up to a petition asking the University to focus on its students' employability.
I was also kidnapped along with the other sabbs as part of RAG week, which found us being traipsed round campus taped together and asking people for randsom (going to RAG) to set us free. This was really fun and a good idea to raise money for the worthwhile causes supported by RAG!
Aside from this, the YUSU elections are now full-swing and it's only another 9 days until my successor is announced as either Rob Newton or Sam Asfahani - please look out for both of their campaigns and check out their policies, before voting next week at www.yusu.org/vote. Good luck to all candidates who are currently campaigning!
Until next time,
Emily xo
