The 18/19 Women’s Hockey team
The night before Sunday, 5 October, vice-captain Amy Mackenzie of the Women’s Hockey First team was scrambling to put together a full Women’s team for the pre-season London Universities Hockey Tournament to be held the next day. She exercised extreme persistence and determination in contacting everyone whom she knew to be part of or to have been a part of the Women’s hockey team via facebook messenger. Unfortunately, given that the tournament was a full-day event, she was unable to gather sufficient numbers to play the early morning matches.
When dawn broke, Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre was brimming with sunshine and activity as university hockey teams arrived in excitement amidst sleepy yawns to claim the tournament trophies. The LSE Men’s team began the day eager to retain their winning title for the third year running. The Women’s team, conversely, had to mentally prepare themselves for anticipated annihilation, with only 9 players and no goalkeeper to play an 11-a-side game.
The final whistle blew for the first games and the LSE Women’s Hockey team lost narrowly to Barts Ladies. Thankfully, the Men on the other hand, won without conceding any goals. This continued in a similar fashion throughout the day, with fatigue and the fact that this was the first time the new squad had played together proving to be detrimental to the LSE Women’s Hockey Team. But, the Men’s strength and positive spirits remained high throughout the day.
Ultimately, the Women’s team lost all their matches marginally despite slotting in a couple of goals in each game. Nevertheless, celebrations were still in order as the Men emerged as tournament champions for the third year in a row, with Kabir Mandair as the man of the match that day. Victory never felt so sweet for them as they never conceded a single goal throughout the whole tournament. Well done Boys!
The following week, the British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) competition season began for both LSE Women’s and Men’s Hockey First and Second teams. The tide took a positive turn for the Women’s teams as the first and second team each soared to victory with comfortable wins of 6 -1 against Surrey and 4 – 2 against University of East London respectively. The Men’s 2s also smashed Barts 5 – 1. Regrettably, despite having played tremendously well and fighting valiantly until the final whistle, Portsmouth triumphed as the stronger team over LSE’s Men’s 1s. Nonetheless, we are still proud of the effort the Men’s 1s put into the game and hope they rest up in time to make a comeback in their next one!
Special shout out to the Ladies teams for bouncing back with their respective BUCS wins despite the disappointing losses at the pre-season tournament. It just goes to show how we should never let our failures define our future. Let’s get it Girls! Once again, congratulations to the Men’s Pre-season tournament team for retaining the Championship title and the Men’s 2s for beating Barts in season..
All the best for the upcoming matches LSE! Let’s hope our wins will be more consistent than our attendance at Zoo this year!
