The York Sport pre-season week, which ran from 1st October until 5th October has genuinely gone down very well amongst all athletes from various clubs. The problem with previous seasons was that York had always played catch-up to every other university with its late start to the academic and sporting season. The solution? A pre-season week which opened up the brand new York Sport Village facilities to the athletes as a means of preparation.
The week began with a rousing talk given by York Sport President, Charlotte Winter, highlighting her goals for the clubs; namely a combined effort to break into the BUCS top 40 universities, after York reached 43rd on the list last year.
Activities included individual club training and various sessions in the studios of the York Sport Village; ranging from spin classes, kettlebells and box circuits to others perhaps unfamiliar such as bokwa. After a few hiccups with signing up for the different sessions early in the week, the process ran very smoothly thereafter.
The range of classes provided an insight to many forms of cross-training giving clubs variety in their schedules. Combined with these physical sessions, were talks given by sports performance coaches, with appearances from Jess Ennis’ physio, Alison Rose, and coach of the Brownlee brothers’, Malcolm Brown. Brown told the audience that “We are all part of why the Olympics has been so special” and “universities are key to the development of UK sport”.
On Monday, Tracey Neville, former England netball player, gave an exclusive coaching session to the netball girls, many of which fully appreciated the advice highlighting both strengths and weaknesses in their game.The arrival of several freshers to clubs around campus also promoted further integration into clubs and teams. The added hindrance of a late start to the BUCS season limits the time freshers are able to gel together with their team-mates, and so the pre-season camp was fruitful in introducing them to their respective teams.
However, not all freshers were able to make the journey due to accommodation issues within teams. Consequently, they must wait until the trials to make their impression. Perhaps an idea for next year’s training camp could be to select accommodation for freshers who wish to attend their respective teams’ sessions. Or what about an allocation of rooms in colleges that don’t open their doors to freshers until the Sunday before term starts?
On the whole, the York Sport Pre-Season camp has positively helped all those who have attended and will certainly provide a platform for those clubs to build on. For the first of its kind, it has definitely paved the way for similar initiatives to be introduced from now on. This has been the first step in elevating the status of Sport at York – let’s just hope it continues. Surely the week can only serve to benefit the performances of our sportsmen and women.