Netball’s season: highs lows and Funday!

Passionate about her sport, Nancy has led the netball club from strength to strength this year; with increased membership, more socials and coming so close to promotion. Despite the difficulties of a plague of injuries and sponsorship woes, ICUNC has had a good year even with potential wins at Varsity to look forward to.

“Membership has gone up again this year; which is a good thing considering the difficulties of injuries we’ve had. We lost key players across four teams which really stretched us and undoubtedly affected out promotion chances”

Indeed the story of their current league standings (3rd, 4th and 5th for their 1st 2nd and 3rd teams respectively) looked completely different before Christmas, with the 2’s having only lost one league game, and all three teams pushing on to gain the coveted top spot which guarantees promotion, but unfortunately it was not to be. Now that promotion has all but slipped through their fingers ICUNC’s attention turns to Varsity.

“I think we’ve got a very good chance against the Medics. The 2s won last year and the 3s, while they came so close last year have already beaten the Medics 3s this season. We’re also looking to enter a fourth team into BUCS this year. We already run two LUSL teams, so it should be a pretty smooth step up.”

The reception to LUSL, the new sports league to replace the ULU leagues, has been completely mixed. Football, hockey and netball have slipped into the new system seamlessly, while hardly a game has been played in the rugby leagues. Certainly netball, with five competing teams have switched without drama.

“LUSL has been really good for all our teams. While some of the leagues aren’t quite right yet as they are new and some teams are too high or low, UCL 3rds have won 9/9 with a goal difference of 267 for example, over the next couple of seasons of promotion and relegation will level them out. It’s great because it gives us a chance to experience different styles of play and play different teams to the BUCS leagues.”

Not only has Nancy’s reign been a success on the court (she personally has moved up two teams this year), it has been a huge success off it, with the socials going from strength to strength.

“Netball Funday is bigger and better than last years, we’re expecting over 100 people and as it’s on St. Patricks day there’ll probably be a few drinks involved too”

For those not in the know, Funday is a fun informal netball tournament being held at South Parks in Fulham. Played in fancy dress with teams of 7-10 people, BYOB and open to all abilities, tickets are £20 per team and available from the netball website (www.icunc.co.uk) or from the JCR on Monday lunchtime.

“Another big social we have is a club night at Piccadilly institute on Thursday the 21st of March. It’ll be £5 in, £9 for a jug of cocktail and full of Netballers ‘fresh’ from Annual dinner.”

With a couple of huge social nights coming up, potential wins at Varsity and an increase in numbers ICUNC is finishing the season strong.

See you at Funday!