London Comp 2014

I feel I must speak on behalf of most people when I say getting our Lifesaving groove on down in the old smoke was the most anticipated event of the academic year. Whether this is simply because I belong to the most northern BULSCA team in England, and the dream of being reunited with the heart of the south; where ‘tea-cakes’ assume their proper sweet, fruity identities, was finally to become a reality, is possible. However either way, it was a Lifesaving- London sandwich, everyone’s two favourite things, and it did not disappoint.

Before the Lifesaving events had even begun, teams were already gallivanting around town like kids in a candy store looking for clues for the scavenger hunt. There were human pyramids, hen-dos, angry coppers, and a series of unconfirmed rumours that the London team had set this up to exhaust the rest of the teams and secure a win at our final competition.

Of course, I joke. In fact, just like the City, the London team were fantastic hosts with everything ready and isolation starting pretty much on time (AND, I might add, the toilet breaks were organised wonderfully, a skill that is always appreciated, so thank you for that). Thus for the next couple of hours we filled the room with semi-conscious bodies, wasting souls and dreams of missed Facebook/twitter activity. As always there were the occasional outbursts of screaming from Birmingham, and Sheffield might have injured a few more people with their annoying attempts at catching ball (seriously though, who even invited them) but all in all it was a pretty classic, humdrum isolation.

So on to the much more interesting events, the dry SERC began with all teams managing to get to the SERC location. The team were immediately put on edge, when they found themselves in a lottery, with one randomly selected team member being given a slightly different brief to the captain and the rest of the team. This incident involved a group of children on the beach whose game of tag has gone horribly wrong, some kids were poisoned by berries and throwing up everywhere, some had sand in their eyes and a couple had ran into each other at full speed and left bleeding on the floor. All in all these kids had a pretty poor understanding of how to play tag. Birmingham A scored highest in the dry, followed by Birmingham B and Loughborough A.

Pretending the surprising turn of events in dry hadn’t happened, competitors hastily moved on to the wet SERC hoping for some emotional reassurance. But London were feeling anything but reassuring. Within seconds they were cutting the head from Leviathan; with captains and team members split up for the beginning of the SERC. The idea being that captains had already been out at sea when the incident happened, and had sent the alarm for the others to join. So the captains, having been given their brief with the rest of the team, bravely ventured on alone for the first 20 seconds. From what I saw, most captains took this as an opportunity to call in casualties and work out where to send their members, with a few finding the radio or treating casualties. (And a couple of crazy rule breakers choosing not to get straight into the water, but teasing the sides for a few seconds too long because, society don’t make the rules. They do what they want.) They were then joined by the rest of the team. The SERC involved a group of people out at sea, all members of the team had to be in the water, and once you had entered the water you couldn’t get back out. There were no sides, so all casualties had to be treated in the water. Closest to the side was a hyperventilating casualty holding his unconscious, non-breathing child. Attempts at treatment varied dramatically; from the heroic CPR on the surfboard, to those that followed their coaches’ directives to the letter, breathing over the child’s cheek for a good whole minute. The radio was located on a surfboard and there was a sugary drink floating in the water. Most teams coped well with the incident given that the set-up was unlike previous events that year. Warwick A came first for the wet SERC, with Birmingham C in second and Birmingham A third.

After an emotional shake-up, teams moved onto the speed events. As if we weren’t psychologically drained already, London saw an opportunity to give us that pre-Christmas work out we’d all not-been hoping for (apart from those, who had ‘press-ups all day every day’ on the top of their list to Santa), with the rope throw, swim and tow and medley. All teams did very well, particularly Loughborough B taking first in the rope throw, Birmingham B winning the swim&tow and Loughborough A winning the Medley.

The social saw the overall winners revealed with Birmingham A coming first, followed by Birmingham B in second and Loughborough A in third, so a huge congratulations to them, the very-deserving winners, and the rest of us the very-deserving, but happy and content, losers. All in all the London comp was a pretty delicious sandwich, with all the BULSCA classics and a couple of unexpected kicks to keep us on our toes for next year, best served with emotional guidance close by.