Varsity 2014

Varsity rolled round with none of us having done any indoor climbing for ages and hence woefully underprepared, making me pretty paranoid about being the first captain to lose to DMU. Our strategy was for the men to stay in touch with their plastic-strengthened wads and the girls to blitz theirs and make up the deficit, hopefully giving us the title. We assemble at the station and all caught the train without incident. Or rather, all except Ellie, who somehow managed to forget her rucksack by leaving it on the station platform. No one could really believe the idiocy on display and abuse inevitably followed. Ellie’s grump factor rose considerably amid forlorn explanations to ticket inspectors but sympathy was in pretty short supply funnily enough. The bag contained her shoes, chalk and wallet helpfully, so renting some was required. We arrived at the Station to find DMU doing a cute group warm up in the circuit room which I blindly gatecrashed before clocking it and backing out of the room. This was then topped off with several manly shouts of DMU! which Josh and I openly laughed at. Needless to say we performed no such histrionics and merely warmed up…

After a quick talking to from the Station bossman we were off. The problems were really good and very techy, with everything from 4 being very droppable if you didn’t pay attention. Dan and I got off to a good start, ticking a few harder problems before going back and doing the first problems so Dan wouldn’t repeat his mistake at BUCS! I was particularly pleased to get the slabby and precarious 12 done first go before many foot slips added a few millimetres of rubber to the already shit foothold, making it a lot harder for Dan later in the comp. A prize of free membership for a term was offered to anyone who flashed everything- my challenge ended at 15 along with many others. Impressive ascents included Dan’s of the desperate 19, Ellie on the reachy and balancey 14 and Amy and Emily clocking impressive scores. Basically a run through of every problem would be boring for both me and you so: suffice to say that by the end of the comp I was bricking it a bit. Me and Dan scored 164 and 165 respectively, but Jack and Brad had had off days with scores in the 120 range and Lally had disappeared after 20 minutes to use a microscope from what I understood. I was slightly dubious about whether the blokes had stayed in touch enough for the girls to make up the difference. These fears proved unfounded though, as our greater strength in depth came to the fore- the men conceded a deficit of only 60, a cracking effort given one of the DMU guys scored an impressive 187, and Amy and Ellie alone beat the DMU girls score, with Emily and Charlie wiping out the deficit and giving us a victory margin of approx. 120 points- easy! Amy and Ellie were rewarded for their efforts with a new hat and the girls got a signed Randall poster. I got the satisfaction of not conceding our crown and a good long chat with Randall about the Cobra Crack. The day finished on a good note as Ellie's bag was found in the office at the station- full retard...

Well done everyone- loads of our blokes got over 100 which was crucial in minimising the deficit and the girls simply crushed it- we salute you!