By Emily Scott
Now we are into the third week of term and some university clubs are feeling the effects of headlines such as “I quit university sport because of binge drinking culture”.
Unfortunately articles like this make lasting and detrimental impressions: not only do they put people off participating in university sport, but they are misleading. Each individual club works fantastically hard to try and gain new members and make them feel welcome, so I find it extremely sad for individuals to be put off university sport before they even have a chance to experience the true side of a club’s camaraderie, both on and off the field of play. It is demeaning to the club committees, who will have spent a lot of time aiming to ensure a successful freshers’ week, to be vilified as promoters of binge drinking when all they really want to promote is their club.
Telling students that if you don’t “get pissed with the captains” you won’t make the team is absurd. Throughout the clubs there are people playing at first team level who do not drink and this does not affect their selection. Teams are picked on the quality of the players, not on who can beat the captain in a ‘strawpeedo’ race.
When I was asked to write this, I contacted the presidents of the three clubs most affected by the freshers’ week article. The Rugby President called the article “inaccurate and unfounded” and said that sensationalising the extent of drinking culture within clubs “ultimately scares freshers away from playing university sport, to the detriment of all involved”. This was a sentiment echoed by both male and female Hockey Club Presidents: “it’s hard not to feel disheartened when your own campus media does its best to rubbish your club’s hard work by publishing sweeping generalisations as fact.”
So adamant is the Football President that drinking on socials does not affect team selection, he has invited anyone to “analyse our selection and compare it to units of alcohol consumed at Ziggy’s last week; if they can spot any sort of correlation, then I’ll run around campus naked!”
Although York may “never be able to compete with the best sporting universities”, I would argue that this is not because of “teams’ amateurish mentality”, but from the university’s continual under-investment in sport. For the moment, York cannot hope to be on a par with the likes of Loughborough, Leeds Met or Bath, but this surely stems primarily from the poorer facilities we have. I don’t believe this has anything to do with “amateurish mentality” on the part of the clubs, in fact, if anything, I would say the professionalism and determination of the clubs is something that we should be incredibly proud of.