#BUCSWednesday Notepad: Week 17

What a day. Catch your breath folks. With Warwick at the centre of University Sport on a national scale, the designated #BUCSWednesday campus in focus; a number of our teams rose to the occasion. With the pressure on, they delivered some truly remarkable displays just mere days before our huge Varsity Weekend duel with Coventry. Whether it was the heated Men’s Basketball duel with Staffordshire that came down to the dying seconds, or the high stakes Men’s Football derby on Cryfield which essentially became a drubbing, you could feel a degree of a heat- a competitive fire that we save for the old enemy once a year. Varsity Weekend. Let’s do this.

Golf double on in a glorious day 

Double promotion. Two words you don’t hear very often, merely whispered by our sports clubs at the beginning of the year with a wistful degree of hope. One jump per club is often enough to constitute a successful season, this year however, both the Golf 1’s and 2’s have been in consistently excellent form. Their roads to glory running alongside one another, reaching a climax yesterday afternoon. Their walks round the green may have yielded the same results but were both very different. The 1st team battled tooth and nail against an accomplished Birmingham side, running out 8-4 winners, whilst the undefeated 2nd team, mainstays in our Power Rankings were dominant. Away to Leicester they sealed the deal 5-1 and rode their golf carts out into the sunset via Pop and very many pints of Purple.

They call it “Clutch” Men’s Basketball win once again in a nailbiter

There’s nothing like watching the clock run down in a high intensity, neck and neck Basketball game. The once frantic pace, gives way to a measured tension, the two sides safe in the knowledge one play can decide their destiny. With the benches in the Sports Hall bouncing and Warwick down two points with less than a minute left on the clock, first year starlet Shaq Amon-Ra channelled the cold-blooded efficiency of Michael Jordan in Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals to break Staffordshire hearts. With the game on a knife edge he sunk a clutch three to level the game, before stinging the visitors with a game winning dagger just before the buzzer. Cue the fist pumps and wild on court celebrations, that was what you call clutch.

Clichés and clinical finishing: Men’s Football 1s win promotion in style

The Men’s Football 1s took the phrase ‘smash the poly’ to heart as they beat Coventry 1s 6-1 to clinch the Midlands 2A title. An emphatic victory was made all the more impressive by the fact that the away side opened the scoring, but once Warwick were ahead they never looked back. The margin of victory could have been even greater had Coventry been reduced to 10 men in the first half. A last-man foul was punished with a very lenient yellow card, causing an avalanche of frustrated clichés from the touchline. The protests weren’t unjustified – the referee really should have ‘applied the letter of the law’ for what was a ‘stone wall’ red card.

When the whistle blew for half time attentions turned to the 2s, who were also playing our Varsity rivals. As one Warwick player stood over a free kick in a promising position, Coventry’s striker attempted to distract him with taunts of ‘there’s no way you’ll score that’. A strike that flew over the wall and into the top corner was the reply.

Anyone who follows the men’s 1s won’t be surprised to hear that Warwick’s six goals included an Andreas Kyprianou hat-trick. Kyprianou’s first two goals were incredible, with another perfectly placed free kick followed by a deft chip that left the keeper stranded. Though his third came from the penalty spot, he had earlier almost completed the treble with an outrageous lob that sailed inches wide. Search ‘Alessandro Florenzi goal v Barcelona’ on YouTube and you’ll see what he almost replicated. This was one of the few things that didn’t go to plan on a memorable day.

Cryfield was a fitting location for the 1s to secure the title.