Pushing the Boat Club Out

UCLBC’s ambition and appeal is greater than ever.

Boat Club Freshers london Rowing Thames ucl uclbc

The year began for UCLBC at the Welcome Fair, where thanks to the successes of rowing at the Olympics, a total of 500 freshers signed up to rowing – a landmark for Boat Club! It seemed that anyone who had caught a glimpse of our GB rowers at Dorney Lake was keen to try out the sport for themselves; it can’t be that hard, can it?

The next step for all our potential new members was Freshers’ Weekend, where those who had never rowed before had a chance to try rowing on the water to see if it really was as easy as it looked. The day ended with a barbeque and many a question from all, who seemed intrigued by this new and exhilarating sport, and even keener to come back and try rowing again.

And that’s exactly what they did. This year a huge number of novices have not only joined the Boat Club, but have been completing all the training in the gym and going out on the water every weekend. And all the hard work is paying off.

Next weekend the best novices, 16 boys and 24 girls, will race for the first time at Cambridge Head against other Novice crews from all over the country. The girls are hoping to defend the Novice title from the event last year, whilst the boys are aiming to improve on last year’s 2nd place – so the weekend is indeed set to be one of nerves and excitement!

Whilst novices have been training hard for Cambridge Head, UCLBC’s senior rowers have already begun their racing season. This weekend the Senior Women competed in Fours Head, finishing 17th out of 44 in their category and 364th out of 496 male and female crews altogether – the best ever result for UCL women at Fours Head!

Following this excellent result, it is less than a week before UCLBC will be jetting off to Switzerland to compete in their next race, Basel Head. As the second year that we will compete in Basel, we hope to improve on last year’s results and enjoy, what is for many of us, the first opportunity to compete abroad.

But it isn’t all hard work at UCLBC. Every Wednesday, men, women, novices and seniors alike come together for the weekly social; this year we have dominated Proud, the Roxy, sported moustaches on a Movember pub crawl and of course partied on a boat along the Thames.

And this is only chapter one. The year is set to see even more from UCLBC; more training, more impressive results, more fun at our Wednesday socials, more hard work and, ultimately, more rewards.