Blog posts

Tenpin get bowled over

The British University Tenpin Bowling Association (BUTBA) Cup final against Loughborough, Sheffield, and Portsmouth took place in Rugby last bank holiday Sunday.

In the semi-final, we were matched against our Northern dominant rival, Sheffield. Facing six strong Sheffield bowlers who all had 180-pin averages, Imperial bowlers showed remarkable resilience. After an enthralling battle, Imperial team B (Kelvin Wong (c), Michael Lau, and Raymond Yang) were only 6 pins behind the opponents, with scores 505-498, 493-498, and 513-521. Although we lost 1-15 overall, there is no shame in defeat.

On the flip side, our best Imperial bowler, Hui Erh Tay, has never let us down.

Tenpin Bowling climb BUCS Rankings

BUCS Tenpin Bowling Championship took place in Sheffield last weekend.

The results were resounding. Former Captain Michael Lau and Former Vice-Captain Hui Erh Tay, our favourite bowlers, achieved 605 and 601 three-game series. Consistent and skilful, Xin Yan Goh and Gabriel Lim had overall averages of 155s. With high averages of 137 and 141, Hamizah Nor and Karson Wong, who joined this year, demonstrated how well beginners could bowl in tournaments. Big improvements were also made by our Captain Kelvin Wong, Treasurer Brendan Lo, and Jackie Leung, who maintained high averages of 159, 152, and 129 respectively.

As expected, the performance of Imperial Women Team was superb even though our competitors were strong.

Bowled over by Tenpin

 

Having already achieved impressive 13.5-2.5 and 9-7 victories over Southampton and last year runners-up Portsmouth, Imperial Tenpin Bowling has had a promising start to the year. Portsmouth and Southampton, having suffered their defeat on Sunday 11th November in Newbury, must now wait to find out who can enter the BUTBA Cup finals, while IC had automatically qualified. With the strong support of the best bowlers in London, Matt Miller and Mike Quarry, the Imperial team is getting well-prepared as we make our way to our first ever tournament finals, which will be against Sheffield, Loughborough and the winner from the group stage.

Imperial Triathlon Club at BUCS – A Lesson in Speed.

This was the race we’d looked forward to: the only BUCS competition this term, but a highlight of the calendar. With five hundred people competing, it is the biggest duathlon event in the country. Hosted at the iconic Castle Combe race track, athletes get to fly around a track that has held motoring events for over 60 years, and holds a great sense of speed. One blessing of the race is that it kicks off at 1:20pm; a civilised time we were very grateful of after the 8am start of the Hillingdon Duathlon just weeks before.

We set off from uni, managing to fit nine people – with bags and bikes – into one minibus.

Records are broken at the BUCS Short Course Swimming in Sheffield

After a reshuffled schedule, the boys kicked the BUCS 2012 swimming short course championships off with 50 free on Friday evening with great swims from Fraser Gordon, Michael Ingram and Niki Peric.  The girls got off to a good start with Catherine Wrench breaking the IC 50 free record to then beat her own time again in the first leg of the girls relay final in a time of 27.71. More success on Friday evening was brought by Caterina Brighi qualifying for the 50 bk semi final, to then swim even faster in a time of 30.91 to get our first BUCS points (and IC record) by qualifying for the final finishing in 8th place.

BUCS Duathlon: 2mile run->10mile bike->2mile run

We were graced with a cold foggy Sunday morning to drive out of London with a 9-seater mini bus stacked full of bikes and triathletes. Spirits were high but there were a few nerves about.  Three of us runners had done a duathlon before and the other three were complete newbies. We arrived in good time to register, check the bikes over and put them in the transition zone.

 The girls’ race was first at 2pm and we cheered Christiane off the start before getting warmed up for ours at 2.45. At the starting line Sam, Richard and I wrestled for a place near the front.

Hi-Fives all round for Imperial College

What is fives? Read on to the very end, and you could get involved and start your beautiful career.

Imperial College Fives society kicked off a promising start to the season after representing at the Universities Eton Fives Championships at Eton College on 12th November and in the BUCS Rugby Fives Championships at Marlborough College.

In fives, a ball is propelled against the walls of a special court using gloved or bare hands as though they were a racquet. Basically, you could say it was squash’s naughty ambidextrous stepsibling.

Rugby fives is very much that, a fast and furious game played with hands and can be played in doubles or singles.

Surfing – Build up to the BUCS Surf champs in Newquay

So as Autumn approaches and everyone returns to college from the four corners of the globe, a special excitement has been growing amongst the dedicated and growing surfing community at Imperial. Next weekend, the club will travel down to Newquay to compete in the national university championships, known as BUCs and our team has the best chance its ever had of making a mark on this years competition.

Many people do not consider surfing to be a competitive sport, the image of a perfect beach with sun, sand and surf hardly conjures up thoughts of hard training, mental preparation and physiological warfare.