July 15, 2018, by brzmjb1
European Universities Games Coimbra 2018 Competitor Blog – James Youle
The European Universities Games 2018 – EUSA Games (EUG) is underway in Coimbra, Portugal.
University of Nottingham is represented at the game by 21 athletes and 4 coaches across Table Tennis, Badminton and Rowing.
Over the course of the games UoN athletes will be leaving their experiences of the games in a number of blogs.
First up is James Youle, who is part of a 5 man badminton team which includes Phone Naing, Derek Choi, Dan Blair and Sam Smith.
Speaking of his experience so far he said,
“Firstly, I would just like to say how proud and happy I feel to represent the University of Nottingham at such a prestigious event and I don’t think that I will get another chance in my life time to be part of something so big.
Our EUSA journey started by qualifying as one of the top 4 University’s in the country – which is an amazing achievement. Everyone in the team is feeling very prepared after a few weeks of pre-tournament training!
We had to pack a bit more conservatively than you usually would for a trip away for 8 days because we had to share bags. But everyone here is very excited to play and Coimbra is such a lovely place to have such a tournament.
Arriving at the Athlete village was both exciting and quite long! We had quite a memorable meal together and also just a great time as a team. Having a wander around the University Sports Park really helped gather a sense of scale of what we were actually involved in!
The sense of team spirit is incredible and the team is getting on so well! Everyone is very excited to play and hopefully win! Especially after winning our first two games 5-0 everyone is feeling very confident and playing well! We are looking forward to some bigger challenges in the next coming rounds and the individual tournament!
Our hope as a team is to better the 3rd place that the team managed to achieve last year. Personally I feel with the strength and depth of team that we have Nottingham will hopefully come home with a team event gold medal and many individual medals too! I think most importantly after a long year of training, the team is excited to be able to perform well on the big stage and do themselves and the University proud!”
Check out James in action at the Games below with a replay of their Group Phase match against University Neuchatel.
Follow all the progress of University of Nottingham students at EUG and stay up to date with all the results from the games here.
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