Having spent most of my life in some sort of sports team, I have always harboured the thought that to be part of a team generates a feeling of solidarity amongst team-mates and a sense of fulfilment that is otherwise difficult to find. However many people are prone to disagree with this, instead believing that sports teams are associated with unnecessary pressure and superfluous drinking. So with the BUCS games and intramural matches getting underway this year, I began to wonder do the positives of being in a university team outweigh the negatives?
One of the most obvious benefits that comes to mind is the improvement of your physique. As a result of attending the compulsory trainings and fitness sessions, you are guaranteed to enhance your fitness and consequently boost your stamina for those nights when dancing continuously for 5 hours seems like a necessity. Now obviously anyone would be lying if they said enjoyed these sessions, particularly when they take place at 7am on a Monday morning but the sense of accomplishment after completing the appropriately named suicide sprints is incomparable to anything else.
Another advantage of being in a team is the possibility of making friends. Working together to achieve the same goal is automatically going to bring you closer to people and seeing each other so often allows friendships to be formed easily. I was so attached to my lacrosse team last year that at the end of, what I thought was the last match of the year, I became quite emotional for we had become such an integrated and close group that it was upsetting to think we wouldn’t experience it again. (I was later to be told that we in fact had a match the week after). Regardless of my humiliation, I am living proof that your team-mates can evolve into your comrades.
And then there are the socials…now for many, fancy dress and excessive drinking have become the highlight of their week, whether they make it home in one piece is an added bonus. But for others, sport socials are their most feared events of the week. Many people are familiar with the stories that come hand in hand with the socials, with people often having to state their favourite sex positions, be challenged to a ‘bolt off’ or complete the most horrendous of tasks. I, myself, have had an egg smashed in my face but nothing compares with what my friend had to endure at her initiation into her club in which she was made to eat an entire onion raw, plunge her head into a bucket of tuna, suck red wine out of a tampon and that’s not even half of it!
Despite the early morning sprints, tuna-in-hair episodes and the obligation to ‘confess’ all of your most embarrassing moments at socials, it would be impossible to deny that being in a sports team at Exeter is actually incredibly rewarding. With the potential for budding friendships and a fabulous figure, why wouldn’t you want to belong to one? So if you haven’t already, sign up for a sport, whether it is competitive or not, and just go for it, you may be surprised at just how much you can get out of it!