A night out with the UCL rowers

Sports night is definitely a night to avoid for those who aren’t into big groups of people yelling at each other to finish a pitcher of snakebite, wearing matching embarrassing outfits and generally being dicks to everyone outside of their sport.

What seems to annoy people even more, however, is when a club likes to show off their sporting prowess and proudly wear their actual kit on a night out: this is where the wonderful experience of Kit Night comes in. I’ve been rowing for last few months and Kit Night is one of the most exciting but also horredous nights of the year.

On this hallowed day of the rower’s calendar, participants have the joy of being forced to wear one of the most revealing and unflattering uniforms for their sport, and also one of the most noticeable. With it’s bright purple lycra embroidered with the crest on the front, we’re to be missed. Which is exactly what we want.

Rowing is without question the hardest sport at UCL, and on Kit Night, we want you to know who we are, we’re proud to be a part of it. We want you to know just how masochistic, insane and physically hard working we have to be. We are that big obnoxious sea of purple in Phineas, in the way, making noise. We like it that you’re staring at us, even if it is with a bitter hatred in your eyes.

As is typical for a Boat Club night out, we’ll get our drinks on in Phineas before attempting to get the bus to Loop. Despite needing to be incredibly organised to row (having to fit in between 8 to 14 training sessions a week, plus uni, plus a social life and maybe a job is HARD), we‘re pretty useless at getting downstairs for 10pm. This is probably because we’re already smashed. Boat Club likes to go hard – it’s our only night off after all. Following this, you can usually spot a confused mosh of people wandering around like drunk cats trying to figure out how to get everyone to Loop.

We do, however, usually get there, and then the dance floor is our zone. We have the staminas of horses, and we don’t need to stop for a break so don’t even try to keep up. There will always be drama of some sort: The Boat Club is like one big family so it’s inevitable something will happen to someone. We’ll have a DMC, sort it out, and carry on dancing. There’s no room for dramas at Boat Club – we have to see each other far too much for that.

We sexy and we know it

No one really knows how the night ends, it all gets a bit confusing. Seniors and novices are mixing and drinks are still flowing, but at the end of the night all you really know is you wake up still wearing your unisuit and club jacket and you look like a legend. Nobody else thinks you do, but that’s just the jealousy talking.