February 25, 2015, by Lee Chrimes

University of Nottingham Sport strike gold at BUCS Nationals

Event roundup by Sophie Thomas

Between Friday 20 and Sunday 22 February 2015, over 150 University of Nottingham students descended on Sheffield to take part in the British Universities Colleges and Schools (BUCS) Nationals, one of the biggest events of the entire championship season.

Three Gold medals were won among the nine different sports represented at the Nationals, and the first medal of the competition was won on Friday night with Mike Hazelwood taking Bronze in the Boxing men’s open category (75-81kg).

Athletics and Badminton were both based at the English Institute of Sport over all three days, which meant a lot of extra support at the track and in the badminton hall. No medals were won but Pierre Walker, Tom Hole and Gavin Lock all made semi-finals on the track before UoN Badminton NBL player Ellen Mahenthralingam and Germaine Chay made it through the quarter-finals of the women’s doubles competition.

Rising star in the world of Judo and UoN scholar Megan Douglas was the first medal contender, but some strong opposition in the women’s -63kg category proved too difficult a mountain to climb. Judo’s first medal of the day came from Sophie Daniels in the women’s -70kg with a Bronze medal. Sophie recently returned to the sport of Judo after a few years away, encouraged back into training by the UoN Sport coaching team of James Austin and Daniel Richardson. A similar story ran for the second medal winner of the day with Jonathan Herron taking silver medal in the men’s -100kg category.

On the second day of competition the club were in full swing with three gold medal in the novice categories, an array of silver and bronzes to back this up before the final events of the day – the men’s and women’s team events. The teams were hoping for big things in the team events, and it proved rightly so with the men taking Silver before the women’s team of Megan Douglas, Sophie Daniels and Raphaelle Barbier Saint Hilaire took the top of the podium with a Gold medal winning performance.

Good performances from Julie Pages and Jacqueline Cordell who made it into the quarter finals of the women’s fencing sabre competition, as well as Chris Madar and Shannon Boardman at the climbing wall created a great atmosphere among the respective teams. In the pool scholar Iain Richardson, Matt Rider, Harry Jenner and William Rose all made finals across the weekend and the women’s freestyle team and men’s medley relay team both made B finals.

At the Ice Arena Trampoline started the day flying high with three of the 29 competitors making it through to their respective finals to be held the following day. This resulted in a Gold medal for Jack De Frates for his performance in the men’s BUCS 6 category.

Karate were the final club to finish their competition and completed a fantastic week for UoN Sport with a team silver for the men’s Kumite and a Gold for Jack Turner.

Squash took place in Birmingham, and UoN Sport were represented by 14 athletes with great performances from Jonny Underhill and Siobhan Knight, but the best performance coming from scholar Sophie Lemom who finished 4^th in the women’s singles competition.

Also in action over the weekend were UoN Table Tennis at the University Park Sports Centre, where there was a whole host of medals won. Scholars Liam McTiernan and Paul McCreery took the men’s doubles titles as Yolanda King and Tressa Armitage, also scholars, had to settle for silver in the women’s respective event. Coming together in the mixed doubles were Yolanda King and Paul McCreery taking silver and Liam McTiernan and Tressa Armitage with Bronze. Yolanda King and Paul McCreery also put in fantastic performances in the singles competition, both coming away with bronze medals.

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