2017-18: A Year of Success for Lifesaving
- King Yee Cheung
- Aug 14, 2018
- 4 min read
2017-18 has been one of the most successful years for the University of Sheffield Lifesaving Club.
In a nutshell, the club:
Placed 2nd in Freshers Competition 2017
Hosted our 2nd league competition
Won 3 golds, 4 silvers, and 4 bronzes and finished 3rd at National Student Speeds, where the female speeds squad placed 2nd
Placed 3rd at BULSCA Championships 2018
Placed 5th in the A league and 4th in the B league
Won BULSCA Club of the Year 2018
Won Sport Sheffield's Most Improved Club 2018
Raised almost £1000 for charities
Won our first international lifesaving medal
Asides from our sporting achievements within lifesaving sport, we have done so much as a club this year, from charity events, to getting involved in the community - where do we begin?
September-December:
After successful promotion of our club at the Sports Fair in September, we had the biggest turnout ever at our Give it a Go sessions. Nearly 50 people attended to learn more about lifesaving sport, first aid, and rescue skills. The introduction of the new October membership saw our fresher intake triple in numbers from last year - the perfect way to kick off the new season.
With only a month of training, we took our freshers to their first competition in Nottingham in October. Impressively, they placed 2nd out of 19 fresher teams, winning a silver medal and foreshadowing the club's future successes.
Fast forward to November: we ran a First Aid at Work course and we hosted a competition run entirely by our committee! 120 competitors from 9 universities attended. The organisation of this competition, accommodating all the competitors, volunteers and judges, along with the great results from our own teams landed us Sport Sheffield Club of the Week.
In December, we worked alongside the RLSS to promote the Don't Drink & Drown campaign. We organised a stall in the SU and distributed leaflets to students, placed posters around the SU and put up a large banner in Crookes Valley Park. Our hard work in campaigning for drowning prevention got us nominated by the RLSS South Yorkshire branch for an award. Other national awareness campaigns we took part in this year included University Mental Health Day. Additionally, we ran our own NPLQ course for the very first time with King Edwards Swimming Pool, where three of our members qualified as lifeguards. We finished off 2017 on a very positive note by collecting
donations for our local food bank to help the less fortunate over the festive period.
January-July:
2018 finally arrived. This only meant one thing: it was time to start using the Sport Sheffield charity naked calendar, in which we starred in! It was a pleasure for us to participate in this and raise money for the Sheffield Children's Hospital. (We can only apologise you all have to wait until September to see our naked picture.)
On a quest to continue the great competition results we achieved in semester 1, we took a squad of 12 to the National Student Championships in Bath in March. Hoping to improve on last year's frustrating 4th place, our squad did not fail to impress! We came home with:
- 3 golds in Women's 100m Manikin Carry (including a British University Record), Women's 200m Super Lifesaver and Women's 100m Manikin Tow
- 4 silvers in Women's 100m Rescue Medley, Women's 4x25m Manikin Carry Relay, Women's 4x50m Obstacles Relay and Mixed 4x50m Pool Lifesaver Relay
- 4 bronzes in Men's 12.5m Rope Throw, Women's 200m Obstacles, Women's 50m Manikin Carry and the Team 4x12m Rope Throw.
This was one of the most outstanding results we've ever had, and to top it all off, our Women's Speeds Squad placed 2nd in the country, with our whole squad winning an overall bronze. Congratulations to Loughborough and Birmingham, who placed 1st and 2nd respectively, along with all the other fantastic clubs that competed.
In April, 12 of our lifesavers took part in Swimathon, a national swimming charity event fundraising for Cancer Research UK and Marie Curie. Together we swam a total of 15km. With all your generous donations, we raised almost £600 for these great charities, bringing our fundraising total for the year to almost £1000. This is the most we have ever raised in one event, and we hope to continue to do the same to give back to the community.
We attended the final league competition in Loughborough where we placed 5th and 4th in the A and B leagues respectively. A massive congratulations to all our competitors who have achieved amazing results this season. All your hard work in training, competing and fundraising helped us to win BULSCA's Club of the Year 2018!
After a year of success, being shortlisted for 3 main Sports Awards was the icing on the cake for us! Jayne was shortlisted for Outstanding Sporting Achievement, Evan was shortlisted for Fresher of the Year, whilst the club was shortlisted for Most Improved Club. We were over the moon to win Most Improved Club, and we only hope to keep on improving.
To end off the whole year, two of our members flew to Singapore to compete in the NUS Invitational Lifesaving Championships 2018 over summer and came back with many personal bests and an incredible silver medal. Congratulations!
A massive thank you to everyone who was involved in the club this past year, you have all helped us achieve incredible things, we hope to experience more of these successes over the next academic year. The new committee cannot wait to get started in making Lifesaving Club the best it has ever been, and we can't wait to meet all of our new members soon!
Keep updated on our Facebook page, Facebook group, Twitter, Instagram, and website with more details over the coming week about joining our club! Roll on Freshers' Week!
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