BUSA No Polo 2008

By Bill Anderson

Immersing in the excitement of Busa No Polo 2008, a celebration of community and camaraderie.

The weekend of 11/12/13 April saw the annual BUSA Canoe Polo Competition at Hatfield Water Park, Doncaster. It is an event that sees teams of five chasing a ball around a swimming pool sized pitch, the aim to score in the goals suspended two metres above the waters surface.

Canoe Polo is a sport I have not played very much that I do enjoy, mainly because you are allowed to push people in! It does get very competitive and heated at points, especially with the Universities that take the event so seriously. However my University, Teesside, like many others see this event as a social gathering and the chance to compete against like minded Universities. Last year we came joint bottom, playing our first ever polo game against Cambridge (I think) in the first round. We did manage two wins but against similarly poor and drunk teams.

This year we were determined to do better.

However, as we don’t have our own polo boats we were relying on others to lend us their spares. We turned up to the event and contacted the club who were supposedly lending us the boats. It turned out that they did not have enough boats to lend us. We were pretty gutted but still managed to make a good weekend of it doing what Teesside do best. Get merry and party. A cracking 80’s themed party was thrown by the organisers with some awesome costumes seen during the night, my personal favourite Optimus Prime. A fully working Transformers outfit, legend.

We will be back next year (well without me, as I graduate) and are all ready thinking up some schemes to raise money for our own boats.

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