February 24, 2023, by brzmjb1
BUCS Nationals 2023 – Friday Round-up
2023 is the 10th Anniversary year of BUCS Nationals! The individual Athletics, Badminton, Climbing and Swimming Championships are held once again in the city of Sheffield over the weekend of the 24-26 February 2023.
On Friday morning, Nottingham’s student-athletes, coaches, physios and support staff headed up to the Steel City for 3-days of competitive action hoping to leave a legacy and create some special memories in #GreenandGold.
Over the past 10 years, Nationals has thrown up some truly memorable moments across all the sports. Whether it’s the Li Lian Yang badminton dynasty, being crowned National Champions in Karate or smashing new PBs in the pool – the event has never failed to deliver.
It was a fantastic start to 2023 for Simran Kaur, the Chemistry student won a silver medal in her 60M T46 Sprint title on Friday evening to firmly place Nottingham on the medal table. In the pool, the Women’s 400m Freestyle team also qualified for Saturday’s A final to provide the perfect start to the 10th Anniversary of the competition.
Athletics
Kwesi Biney crosses the line in the 60M Men’s Sprint
In the 60m heats, William Wilshere qualified for the semi-finals with a brilliant time of 7.03 seconds but despite a fast start out of the blocks, a close and competitive race saw him narrowly miss out on a place in the final. Despite the result, Wilshere can be proud of his efforts here at BUCS Nationals opening day with some very competitive times.
Kwesi Biney also ran a fantastic heat, finishing in 3rd place, but his time of 7.13 seconds wasn’t fast enough to allow him to progress to the semi-finals.
In the women’s 60m Eleanor Callaghan-Inge and Zoe Drake faced a tough field.
Both Nottingham runners finished 5th in their heats for the Women’s 60M hurdles, with Carmen Williams (9.16 secs) and Shakanya Osahon (9.95 secs) registering strong times on the track.
The closing performances of the day belonged to Simran Kaur, who’s T46 Silver medal proved to be the highlight of the action at EIS. The Nottingham student now has a BUCS gold and a BUCS silver medal over the past 2 years from this event, fighting back from an ACL injury which kept her out of the sport. She was cheered home by a jubilant crowd in the stands and the result crowned a wonderful day for University of Nottingham athletics.
Adding to the result Simran told us that she is now ready to “I’m happy with today and I’m now looking forward to pushing my full focus into BUCS Outdoors.”
Badminton
On the first day of competition, University of Nottingham Sport had a small amount of entrants into the qualifying rounds of the 2023 BUCS Badminton National Championships, before the remainder of the #GreenandGold enter the main competition tomorrow. Saturday’s entrants include silver medallists from last year, Sian Kelly and Kirby Ngan who will be looking to go one better this year.
Speaking ahead of the championships, Head of Performance Badminton at the University of Nottingham Martyn Lewis said; “I think there is a good chance that we can have another successful weekend this year. I hope that the players entered come out and enjoy their badminton, and results will be what they will be. If they play well, I’m confident that they can be successful.”
Looking firmly at Friday’s matches in the qualifiers (round of 128 matches through to the round of 64, to determine tomorrow’s last 32), Lewis told us; “It’s a quieter day today but we do have Romilly and Jacob playing, so I hope that they do well and can get through. Let’s see how it goes – it’s sport! However, I think that if they perform how I know that they can, I’m sure that they will do well today.”
Once underway, Friday’s play started emphatically for the University of Nottingham as the aforementioned Jacob Weekes entered the qualifying stage facing off against Lincoln’s Jonathan Reilly. Showing no signs of Nationals nerves Weekes took a comfortable 2-0 victory in the opening match of the weekend to put him into the round of 64, before dispatching Danny Chen of Durham by the same score. This left Weekes needing to defeat Alex Lewis in the final round of qualification to extend his 2023 Nationals journey to Saturday. Unfortunately though, the main draw would be one step too far as he succumbed to a very close 2-1 defeat (17-21, 21-10, 11-21) to his Cambridge opponent.
Weekes’ teammate Romilly Calvert was sat courtside during his second match trying to release some of her own pre-match nerves by cheering him on to victory. Calvert was scheduled to face Ailar Ashfari in her qualifying opener but received a walkover into the round of 64. A tough match-up awaited Romilly with Samvida Venkatesh of Oxford pushing her to three sets, but Romilly took a 2-1 victory (15-21, 21-11, 21-18). However, as with team mate Jacob Weekes, the main draw proved out of reach as Jennifer Laverty of Strathclyde would be the one moving on with a 2-0 (14-21, 19-21) win.
We look forward to the main draw tomorrow with University of Nottingham’s seeded players entering the competition, including scholar and last year’s silver medallist Kirby Ngan entering as the top seed in the Women’s Singles.
Swimming
Our swimmers descended on Ponds Forge for the opening session of the Long-Course Swimming Championship. The Friday evening is a combination of Heats for our freestyle team and straight to final Freestyle events.
We caught up with Joseph Standford, Director of the Coaching at Nova Centurion and Head Coach at University of Nottingham.
“The BUCS Long Course Championship is super exciting but also incredibly tough. We are under no illusion as to how strong the field is but we are bringing a fresh coaching team here and the introduction of Glen Smith to the staff provides us with a lot of coaching experience at this level. BUCS long course is really tough and there are a lot of great swimmers here to overcome. Obviously we have a fantastic set of swimmers who are supported by Nova with us, so it’ll be an exciting weekend for our team!”
Constantinos Hadjiconstansis dives into his leg of the 4x100m Freestyle at Ponds Forge
Women’s 400m Freestyle Team – 3rd in heat, Qualified 5th overall and progress to Saturdays A finals.
Men’s 400M Freestyle Team – 7th in the heat with a time of 3.38:74 and will head into the B final
Mixed 4*100m Medley – Result TBC
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It has been a fitting opening day to the 2023 BUCS Nationals with fantastic performances from the entire team.
The stage is well and truly set for a tomorrow’s ‘Super Saturday’ of student sport in Sheffield.
You can follow the University of Nottingham’s progress in the BUCS Nationals on our Twitter, Facebook and Instagram feeds. There will also be regular updates on our BUCS Nationals website and social media channels.
The action is also brought to you live via BUCS TV.
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