Articles
Sports Review
Out Here in the Fields
Alex Davies gives a run down of this year’s sporting progress as part
of his role as outgoing Sports and Societies Officer
Alex Davies,
Sports and
Societies
Officer ‘1516
The 2015-16 season has been yet
another very successful one for Grey
College’s sports teams. There have
been a couple of premiership or other
divisional titles and an increase in participation, making it a very enjoyable
year.
Firstly, whilst Collingwood have all but
secured the overall College sport title,
there has been fierce competition for
the coveted 2nd place. Having held this
spot all of last year until the summer
term, when we were pipped into 3rd,
Grey were keen to continue the fine
work and after a fairly slow start moved
into second place midway through the
first term. After a solid finish to the
Epiphany term and a useful start this
summer, 2nd place is looking secure
this time around.
The Men’s A badminton team continued their stunning form as they won
a 3rd straight Premiership title; you
would have to go back nearly 4 years
to find their last loss, showing why they
were deserving winners of the Team
of the Year Award. There was further
success for the Men’s B team who
achieved promotion from Division 2 a
year after finishing bottom.
The Ultimate Frisbee team also secured back-to-back Premiership titles
as they comfortably dispatched all
opposition in a reformatted league. A
final Premiership success was picked up
by the college’s Volleyball team as they
rebounded from an early loss to win
out the year and claim top spot.
Men’s cricket ended their long silverware drought as they picked up the
division title with an undefeated season
meaning they return to the Premiership
next year.
The Women’s Hockey team picked
8
up the Sport of the Year award as they
slaughtered the rest of Division 1 on
their way to the title, meaning they will
return to the top tier next season.
Men’s Football had another decent
year as all five teams returned with
mid-table finishes. The A team had a
successful cup run as they reached the
semis before sadly losing on penalties.
The performance of the year undoubtedly goes to the D team (All the Ds)
– who came from 5-1 down in the last
game of the season to win 6-5 as they
finished above the E team on goal difference!
The five Netball teams had mixed
results. There were a few big victories,
most notable was the A team’s win
over Hild & Bede. There were further
decent seasons from Basketball, where
the women won their first game for
a few years, Women’s Football and
Futsal, Men’s Hockey, Mixed Lacrosse,
Rounders, Rugby, Squash, Table Tennis and Tennis who all secured solid
mid-table results.
There has been the introduction of
a Netball E team, as well as a women’s Futsal team, as more people get
involved with the fantastic and ever
growing Durham College Sports’ programme. There have been different
university-wide initiatives such as the
‘This Girl Can’ campaign, as well as offering each college the chance to headline the Team Durham website for one
weekend to advertise their victories.
Furthermore, two more college varsities
took place, against York and Loughborough, which saw Grey’s Women’s Football and Netball teams make the cut.
Overall, it has been yet another quality
year of sport at all levels.