From lacrosse to table-tennis - Chichester students have high hopes

We have caught up with a number of University of Chichester sport team members to talk about their hopes for the season ahead.
The University of Chichester's lacrosse teamThe University of Chichester's lacrosse team
The University of Chichester's lacrosse team

The University of Chichester’s women’s lacrosse team got their season off to a flying start with an impressive 17-3 win over St Mary’s, with Jess D’Arcy and Lacrosse president Adele Page both scoring six.

Page said: “Last season we did really well. We improved on the season before and finished a place higher and progressed nicely, bringing the freshers up to the standard of the other girls. We finished on a high and just wanted to carry that on into this season.

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“We’ve lost about half our team from last season so we were worried about this year. But we did amazingly at recruiting and the club as a whole has 46 members. We’ve got 33 girls and it’s a 12-a-side sport so it’s amazing how many we recruited. We’ve probably got about 20-25 freshers this year which we’re very happy about.

“This year’s aim is to make sure everyone gets game time. Obviously with so many people this is going to be hard but we’ll organise friendlies to make sure that people get to play. Hopefully we’ll finish at least top three.

Page’s team went 4-0 up in the first ten minutes thanks to two apiece from D’Arcy and Page. St Mary’s pulled one back before Zoe Karavasili scored on the whistle.

D’Arcy struck again just after the restart to make it 6-1 before the visitors scored twice in a minute. Tatiana Seymour put the home side 7-3 ahead and then another two from Page and one from D’Arcy sent Chi into half-time 10-3 up.

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Page and D’Arcy added to their first-half tallies along with Karavasili and Alice Wright.

The men’s table-tennis team started life in Southern 1A with a 14-3 victory over Brunel.

Dan Pound, whose team did a league-cup double last year, said: “We had quite a year – undefeated the whole season, which was brilliant. “We got some great freshers, with Richard Pelc winning fresher of the year at the sports awards. Then Oli Hicks and Tom Beales gave us some big wins against other players.

“Our aim this season is to go straight up again. We’ve been promoted two seasons in a row. I’d love to see us go up into the premier division. We haven’t any freshers this year but I’m still confident in our team – the squad’s still strong.”

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Regarding his role as Racquets president, Pound said, “As a whole racquets has been doing really well. Tennis has gained a load of freshers, which is nice to see. Badminton are still holding their own. We’ve got our second men’s team and they’ve got a lot more matches this year.”

Chi’s men’s tennis team beat Brunel 10-2 away and it was 6-6 at the Falmer Sports Complex for the women’s tennis team against Sussex.

Women’s badminton captain Harriet Woolgar said:”Last year we did unfortunately get relegated but hopefully we’ll be able to win the league and go straight back up again. The four new freshers are looking good and ready to go. We’re just training them into the team but they fit in perfectly.”

Woolgar and her team of Tanya Pinto, Bethany Weston, Becky Earl, Megan Dowinton and Valerie Chan got off to a great start beating Roehampton 6-2.

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The men’s football firsts maintained their unbeaten Premier South start with a 1-1 draw at Swansea. Jamie Chand got the goal.

The women’s football firsts bounced back after an opening-game defeat by beating St Mary’s 4-1 in Twickenham.

Chi’s men’s rugby firsts thumped Brunel Seconds 38-0 and there were wins for the men’s basketball seconds, women’s volleyball and women’s hockey seconds.

In netball, the seconds, thirds, fourths and fifths all won.

Get a weekly round-up of the University of Chichester sport teams on this website every Wednesday and in the Observer on a Thursday