Steff Milne, Co-President, Sports & Development, gives us her highlights of term one.
I hope everyone has had a great term and made the most of everything on offer. It’s been a busy term full of events, campaigns and lots of positive changes being made by our Student Opportunities team. Let’s take a look back at the last three months.
Sports Clubs
Way back in September Freshers' Fair saw a record number of people flood through the doors with 1428 students signing up for sports clubs since then! Huge well done to all clubs on providing such a great sports offering and engaging so many people in sport so far this year!
Campaigns
In October I launched my first campaign, Healthy U to make students understand the benefits of a healthy lifestyle on their study and wellbeing! Exercise Week was a big success with loads of you tweeting in your daily steps and telling us how you got active during the week! Look out for #HealthyU: Food and Nutrition Week coming your way on the 23 January. Take a sneak peek at our guest speaker Jemma Andrew- Adaimah, writer of health blog Celery and Cupcake!
This BUCS Girl Can week kicked off November with ten clubs sending in statements about how mixed sport is important to their club and 70 sports club members took to Eastfields to take part in our mixed old school sports day.
Competitive Sport
It’s been great to come and watch all our teams compete each week in Bears Wednesday and we have had some great wins this term! A HUGE thank you to everyone that made our first Big Bears Wednesday such a success, I’m looking forward to Big Bears Wednesday take two!
As you all know competitive sport doesn’t just happen on a Wednesday. It is easy to forget that whilst you are sleeping in on a weekend teams are battling it out in LUSL and other external competitions. A big thank you to you guys who take to the field, pool or sports hall to represent us outside of Wednesday afternoons.
Back in October we launched Varsity at Bears Night! You can check out our dramatic teaser video below, for what promises to be the sporting event of the year. We are currently coordinating fixtures with University of Surrey for all the clubs and societies involved. There will be more information available in the New Year with the launch of our Varsity website so keep your eyes peeled!
Fundraising
Our first ever SocSport has been very successful with ten SocSport events taking place during RAG Week. I am so pleased to have been able to set the ball rolling with this scheme which I hope is something we can continue to get more collaboration between sports clubs and societies in the future. We are currently calculating all the money raised by events over the last week to be announced at the beginning of next term. I am also planning SocSport 2.0 fundraising edition for clubs and societies to raise money for their own activities!
Changes in Student Opportunities
Thank you to everyone that has read this far. I would like to address the huge amount of change that Student Opportunities has undergone this year. I would like to thank everyone for the huge amount of support and embracing all of the changes in administration and processes that have been thrown at you this year. Everything we have been doing this term has been to improve the service that we provide to you as students and we are working hard to make sure that we are impacting your experience in the most positive way possible!
We are making sure that all the changes we make are communicated to all students, but if there is ever anything you are unsure of or would like to give feedback on please don’t hesitate to get in contact with me or come and see me up in the open plan office behind the Helpdesk!
Finally I have had an incredible term and I hope all of you have too! Can’t wait to see you all after Christmas! Have a great break and I will see you in the New Year!
Steff Milne
Co-President, Sports and Development