One of the things I decided before leaving Tennessee and heading to the UK was that I wanted to join at least one sport or club while I was abroad. The first thing I noticed about the university of Chester was how many options there was. Some of this has to do with how large the university is. I was torn between joining the running society and the rowing society. I ended up going to the rowing team after they invited me to one of the sessions. I used to row when I was younger and I was glad I made this choice as it gave me the chance to do this again and I was able to meet some amazing people.
What was most interesting about sports in the UK was it let me realize how seriously we take sports here in the US. For example, even in high school when I did sports we trained 5-6 days a week and the continued into college. However in the UK we only had practice 4 days week. Not only that, but they would ask who could and could not make it each to each session. I know here in the US that would be really odd and uncommon to ask who would or would not be at practice as you're expected to be at every practice. Even for rowing we didn't have an actual paid coach. We had a post-grad student who was rowing with us taking over as coach. Some sports did have actually coaches, but there were several teams that just had players that took over roles as a coach. It took me a bit to get used to the more relaxed nature of sports in the UK, but I really started to enjoy it. All of my time wasn't consumed with training and I was able to stay active and hang out with people I enjoyed. I could do a whole post about drinking culture in the UK, a did write one of my final papers about it, but another thing that stood out to me was after one our first Friday practices some of the other people in the club mentioned going out for pints. That caught me off guard as I never would have thought about going for drinks after practice but for them that was just something they did.
Another thing I really enjoyed about sports here was something they called varsity. Varsity was a week long event between our rival school Salford. The best way to describe it is like the Olympics. All week our sports teams compete against their sports teams. For example, our rowing team won our erg relays so we got one point. This keeps going until all teams have won and the school with the most points wins varsity. I enjoyed getting to go around and watch my friends compete, but the last day was so much fun as the whole day there was some type of sporting event to go see. Most students didn't have class that day so you just went and watched sports. I went and watched my friend compete in badminton, went and did my rowing race, the rowers went and watched rounders (their version of baseball) and I went and cheered my friend on in volleyball. It was such a fun and relaxing day where students could take there mind off of things and cheer for their friends and school.
Joining this team was one of the best things I did abroad as it allowed me to take time away from the other international students and interact with students from the UK. I've made new friends and am very thankful for getting to know them.
