MID-YEAR ROUND-UP...

BUCS LEAGUE: Scotland and Northern

POSITION: 1st

RESULTS:

Leeds 36 - 37 Sheffield W

Leeds Beckett 59 - 60 Sheffield W

Newcastle 107 - 110 Sheffield W

Edinburgh 97 - 100 Sheffield W

Sheffield 114 - 95 Durham W

St Andrews 75 - 76 Sheffield W

With Christmas just around the corner it’s time to reflect on the past semester here at SUWCC before we eat too many pigs in blankets and begin dreading the return to AR2 in the new year…

The new academic year brought good news, with the club securing £7,343 of Sport England’s Small Grants Fund to set up an indoor league for teams of all ages all over Sheffield. The league got off to a flying start on the 9th of October with around 110 women and girls getting involved over the 6 weeks of the competition. If that wasn’t success enough, our very own 1st team went on to claim the Division 1 title in style with a win over local rivals Sheffield Hallam, earning themselves the first piece of silverware of the year. The club also entered 2 other teams in Division 2 of the league, where the 2s grabbed a few wins to get themselves going for the year and the 3s, made up almost entirely of girls new to the game, came on leaps and bounds. But that isn’t all for South Yorkshire’s Women’s Indoor Cricket League, off the back of a successful coaching course held by the club on the 11th December in which 13 girls became qualified Coach Support Workers, we hope to run ‘get into cricket’ sessions across South Yorkshire for people of all ages to coincide with the re-launch of the This Girl Can campaign. For more details of this, keep a close eye on our website and Facebook over the next few weeks…

Alongside smashing it in the indoor league, the 1sts also competed in the annual BUCS Indoor Cricket competition. This year brought new opposition as the geographical boundaries were redefined, placing us in the Scotland and Northern League, away from our beloved Hallam. With almost no idea what to expect we headed up to Durham for the first half of the competition, bringing back three wins to add to the collection. The girls then sealed the deal at Headingley, winning their final three games and storming through to Nationals for the third year on the bounce. All that remains now is to wait for the 12th February to see what Cardiff and the Super 8s have instore for us.

It’s not just been about the cricket this semester at SUWCC, with fundraising and volunteering galore it’s been an action-packed semester. November saw the return of our volunteering in school’s programme, culminating in a tournament day held for the kids at Goodwin. We also got involved with the shoebox appeal with SURLFC and have plenty more instore for 2017. Moreover, we ran our second ever Pub Quiz, this year with SUWFC, more than doubling last year’s total for the night in aid of the British Heart Foundation. Teaming up with Opening Up Cricket, an organisation promoting mental-wellbeing among cricketers, we have released our new Club Shirts featuring their logo, and sold in aid of the organisation and the charity they support. We look forward to welcoming them in the new year for a ‘mind and body session’ promoting mental wellbeing through keeping active and playing sport. Adding to this our glow-stick selling in October, and the Spiderwalk in November, already the club has raised around £1000 with plenty more fundraisers planned for the new year. Finally, we got involved in this year’s Sports Committee Naked Calendar, featuring for the third year in a row, this year as the month of June.

We’ve had a ball so far this year and are extremely proud of the club and all its members for everything we have achieved so far. With plenty more in the pipeline, 2017 is set to be bigger and better than ever…