By Noah Poll & image sourced from ICWFC
I spoke with 4 committee members of the Women’s Football Society at the end of Michaelmas term to discuss aspects of the team like results, social events, and team culture. They told me about unique traditions the team has and what they are looking forward to.
Noah: What competitions has Women’s Football society competed in so far, or if you haven’t, how have practices gone?
Teresa Petralia (President of Women’s Football Society): We’re in the southeastern tier of BUCS, which is the UK league. We were also in the cup, but we lost our match to move on. We have a tournament in Paris later in the year. We also have a social team, which is not in official leagues.
Noah: That sounds nice! Sorry about the cup…
Teresa: We lost on penalties and they scored in the last 30 seconds of extra time… It was really rough. Nothing we’re not used to.
Noah: And what social events / activities have been organized?
Olivia Thompson (Social Secretary): We do a social every Wednesday – it varies – we try to make them inclusive to people that don’t drink or that don’t like to go out. We’ll alternate. We’ll do a pre-drinks where we have drinks and do drinking games and then we’ll go to Sway. We’ll usually go as a group and we make sure to include everybody. Then, the second week we’ll do something that’s activity-based: bowling or minigolf, for example. We like to mix it up and do dinners and stuff like that. We have special event socials like Carol and a big Christmas party.
Noah: Cool, sounds great! I like how you have the alternating weeks, that’s something unique.
Olivia T: Yeah, most people go out every week. [Laughter] It does really work out and it’s important to do that for inclusivity.
Noah: Do you have any team traditions?
Lily Merrett (First Team Vice Captain): Before every game we have a little chant: “WF–C! WF–C! WF–C! LSE!”. It’s only been a thing for 2 years as we didn’t have much continuity up until now. We’re trying to establish some things. After our first training session this year, we all went to the pub to have a drink. We’re hoping to do that at our last one of the year. We all get along very well during trainings but it’s important to have that afterwards as well.
Olivia T: I suppose we’re trying to establish traditions. That’s what we had been working on over the summer. Our mentality was: “let’s build a really solid club that can survive when we leave”.
Noah: What has been your favorite memory from being on the football team?
Olivia Zhou Chen (Secretary): My favorite memory is last year’s Carol (2021). I really felt this sense of family for WSC. I was not particularly a clubbing person but I still really liked the vibe of my teammates so I went. I was just not used to clubbing, so I felt tired so quickly. The most important thing is all the other girls were trying to make sure I was safe. When we were in a crowd trying to get to the other side of the club, they always held my hand. There was heartfelt solidarity and it gave me a sense of family.
Olivia T: This isn’t really a favorite moment… But I had a medical emergency at one of the socials – unrelated to drinking – and Teresa and Vivi got me an Uber to get to the hospital. You don’t always get that, there are groups in life and uni that would never do that for you. Even though they weren’t good moments, it was a moment where I was like: “these people have really got my back.”
Lily: I enjoyed the Paris trip. Last year we didn’t have a lot of success playing wise because we didn’t have that many people and we were all on the whole game. We lost all of our matches last year. We showed up every week and we made the commitment, so that was really important to us. But, when we went to Paris, we won a game. It was pure joy, when the buzzer went off and it was 2-1, it was the happiest moment ever, we all ran onto the field and hugged each other. After a lot of disappointment it was nice to actually experience that together.
Noah: Thank you for sharing that, it’s always great to have different people with different perspectives share their story. What are you most excited for the rest of the year?
Lily: I’m excited for Varsity, which is our big end-of-year match against Imperial, and I feel like it really brought us together last year. I’m also excited to see who runs for what position in the committee, who has felt involved to the point where they want to have a leadership role.
Olivia T: I really want to plan a fundraiser for a sexual assault charity, hopefully one that is focused on providing legal aid. I’m really excited to plan that – I don’t know much about it, but I’m excited to do that this year.
Teresa: Football has been such an important part of my uni experience. What I’m excited for is to strengthen the friendships I’ve made through the sport. I want to set everything up for when I leave, and I want to make sure I still keep in contact with these people. I just hope that we still have fun with the time we have left.
