College Conundrum

YES- Charlotte Ferris

YORK IS ONE of only a small number of British Universities which upholds the collegiate system and it is something to be proud of.

College sport lifts the whole college, as seen with the extremely popular College Cup in football, and more should be done to emulate this in other sports. However, in some sports the willingness to play for your college is abysmal.

All university players should want to play for their college, as their expertise can be passed over to players at a lower level than themselves, thus improving the quality of college sport. Despite rigourous training sessions which University players have to endure, there is still time left over to play for your college.

College sport also gives people a chance to play a number of different sports. For example, College Sport officer Charlotte Winter plays Lacrosse for the University and Netball for her college team. This displays great college spirit, which other players could learn from.

The ban on no University netball first team players and no University male hockey first team players being able to play for their college must be looked into in the future, as University players are vital to college sport.

NO- Alex Finnis

IN THE EYES of many, the best thing about York’s collegiate system is college sport, and how it provides a sporting platform for those who can’t quite reach the dizzy heights of representing the University every Wednesday afternoon.

Whilst University players will argue that they want to represent their college, there are far more reasons against York’s elite playing college sport, than for it.

Firstly, it can only be seen as a hindrance for the Uni teams; the last thing they want is for their star player to pick up an injury playing for his college just a few days before their crunch tie with a local rival.

Secondly, the more Uni players that play for their college, the fewer people can actually play sport at York at all. There are plenty of occasional sportsmen out there who will happily get their kicks playing football for Vanbrugh 2nds each week, but if their 1st team suddenly becomes a UYAFC select XI, then these part timers get pushed out and are forced to fulfil their competitive urges by thrashing an unwilling flatmate at subbuteo.

The last thing we want to do is to stop people from playing competitive sport, so leave college sport to the college players, the Uni lot have their own teams to play for.