What a weekend for #TEAMWARWICK at the BUCS Nationals in Sheffield (24-26 February).

Athletics, Badminton, Climbing, and Swimming came together as one for a weekend of success, personal bests, and plenty of enjoyment.

Athletics

On the track most notably, scholarship athlete George Seery ran a personal best of 48.25 in the 400m Men’s semi-finals. This led him to the final to which he placed in 4th (48.46), milliseconds behind a 3rd place medal.

Over in the field, we had performances from another scholarship athlete, Femi Segun, in the Men’s Pole Vault. Femi vaulted a 4.33m in the final, scoring him a joint 7th result. Warwick Athlete Angus Bowling followed closely, placing 11th with a 4.23m result.

Action from the field events saw athlete Janet Browne compete in not only one but two field events. Janet jumped to 7th place in the Women’s High Jump with a 1.66m and continued to place 11th in the Women’s Triple Jump with a 11.56m. An amazing result to score so highly in two disciplines.

Finally, we saw the Men’s 4x200m Relay, with the team just missing out on qualification and coming 9th overall.

We saw some outstanding athletics performances throughout the weekend, with Warwick looking stronger than ever. It’s a very bright future for athletics at Warwick.

Badminton

Jake Thomas (Men’s Singles), Maya Kateli (Women’s Singles) and Sam Weekes/ Emily Chan (Mixed Doubles) all won their first two rounds before unfortunately losing in the final round of qualifications. Maya Kateli/ Asha Kateli (Women’s Doubles), Antrea Alexandrou/ Emily Chan (Women’s Doubles) and Sam Weekes/ Lawrence Li (Men’s Doubles) all made it through qualifications into main draw.

Yang Zi (Women’s Singles), Andy Oates/ Yang Zi (Mixed Doubles) and Sam Weekes (Men’s Singles) all won their first round in main draw, making it through to the last 16 in their events.

Six players from Warwick made it through to the quarter finals. Jingchen Lu (Women’s Singles) won her first round in main draw before going on to beat the 5/8 seed in straight sets, making it through to the quarter finals! Kelvin Ho/ Phoebe Moore (Mixed Doubles) also won their first two rounds in the main draw both in straight sets before losing to the number 2 seeds in a very tough quarter final. Scott Oates/ Andy Oates (Men’s Doubles) also beat the 9/16 seeds in the round of last 16 before losing to the number 2 seeds in a well-fought quarter final match.

Two Warwick players made it all the way through to the finals. In Men’s Singles, Samuel Ricketts won every match in straight sets, beating the number 3/4 seed in the semi-finals before eventually receiving a silver medal after a well-fought but very tough final.

Our Men’s Doubles pair, Samuel Ricketts and Kelvin Ho, became the first ever Warwick Badminton players to win an event at BUCS Nationals. In a phenomenal, and very tense, semi-final, Ho and Ricketts beat the number 1 seeds, sending them through to the finals where they beat their opponents in straight sets and became Warwick Badminton’s first ever gold medallists at BUCS nationals!

“This year we had an amazing year at BUCs Nationals. It was a culmination of 4 years work to finally gain a gold medal at an event which has been dominated by other Universities previously. The whole team were amazing but the cheery on top of the cake was winning Gold in the Men's doubles. They play fantastically and it was well deserved. History was made for Warwick here and I am very proud to be working with all these athletes.” – Head Coach Nic Strange.

Climbing

Some awesome performances from our Climbing athletes. After a long morning session on Saturday 25th February, athletes were hard at work solving challenging routes, totalling points after points.

In the men’s event, we saw scholarship athlete Ben Smith place joint 12th overall with fellow Warwick athlete Tom Stopford. Followed closely by scholarship athletes Elliot Payne and Joshua Bruyns, who placed 21st and 33rd. All scores in, the men’s team came 5th overall.

In the women’s we saw a fantastic performance from Eve Poirier, who placed joint 18th. Other performances saw Helen Norman placing 41st, Laure Renault scoring 54th place, and Holly Hickman 58th.

Swimming

What a weekend for our swimming athletes. 13 athletes headed over to Ponds Forge for the weekend and managed to return with 12 club records and secured 7 finals.

Scholarship athlete James Le Grice topped off two A Finals, placing 5th overall in the Men’s Backstroke (26.20) and 9th overall in the 50m Butterfly (24.86). An outstanding result for James. Further performances saw Ben Fielder place 9th for 50m Breaststroke B Final (30.10), and Ryan Zhao place 8th in the 200m IM B Final (2:16.48).

We also saw some great action from our relay teams. The Men’s 4x100m Medley (Team: James Le Grice, Ryan Zhao, Jack Turrell, Lucas Lawman) placed 8th in the B Final (4:05.56) and also placed 9th in the Men’s 4x100m Freestyle B Final (4:05.56). The Women’s 4x100m Freestyle (Team: Alyssa Basinger, Joanne Neal, Gen Moller-Butcher, Anna Drawer) placed 9th in the B final (4:14.57).