The intervarsities ran off brilliantly last weekend! In the end all the plans came together, the competitions went without a hitch and the parties were epic! It was great to see the entire University of Limerick Kayak Club pull together and put in a huge effort to make sure that everything worked out. No matter what was asked of people they stepped up and got the job done, even if that meant getting up at 5.30 in the morning after a big night out to go and set up a whitewater course or standing at the side of a river logging times or whatever. They also rallied together in support of the paddlers competing in the various diciplines too, making sure that everyone was well supplied with food and water and anything else they could want which definatly helped towards the performances that people put in!
The preparations started getting hectic back in the middle of last week when jobs like putting together the whitewater courses and picking teams had to be done but the real madness started on Friday evening when a couple of hundred students turned up to the Arena pool expecting a polo competition. Bar a few minor delays and hiccups leading to a late start to the after party in the Lodge the polo event went perfectly. Unfortunatly the competition could have gone better for ULKC but we played really well in two of our three games and even though we only won one of them we're still pretty happy with it. At the Lodge nightclub after the polo we got some indication of what the banter list was going to do to the weekend with lots of beer spilled, club captains chased away from the venue and other harmless antics like that!
The next morning dawned not at all bright and awful early with lots of people cursing at me for organising the whitewater event to start at stupid O'Clock in the morning! Everyone met up at the UL boathouse at 6.30 and thanks to the cooperation of most of the competitors we were ready to head to Castleconnel pretty soon after. After a short delay due to some clubs -not mentioning any names- thinking that they were too good to help out with rescue we were ready to start timed runs. We had to change the course slightly a few days beforehand because of really high water levels and in the end we had a really nice section to race on. Still not too difficult but some of the gates we put on it were really challenging and there were definatly no competitors on the water who would have called it easy! In the end the event went perfectly, no one got hurt and everyones time was logged without incident. We even finished up on time!
When we got Castleconnel cleared up after whitewater we headed back to UL for the long distance races. With a live band and around 500 people milling around the UL boathouse there was a great vibe going on there when we got back. The aforementioned banter list also led to more entertainment like people regularly going for naked dips off the pontoon into the river! The course was around 6km overall; 3km downstream, around Corbally bridge and back upriver for another 3km. What made things even more awkward was having to swap around all the people who were staffing the event to let them compete in their own races. We thought this would mean that peoples paddling performance would be compromised when they came to racing but it turned out we were wrong! Everyone put in a massive show in their respective classes and we ended up with competitors doing well in virtually all of them!
Since this was an intervarsities competition, the highlight of the weekend was naturally the party on Saturday night! Hosted by the Stables club, the evenings entertainment included Banterstar Galactifunk and it was an epic night of hardcore partying! Coming to the party it was easy to tell the different colleges apart thanks to the different costume themes, including the army from DCU, the romans from LYIT and other groups like crayola, pokemon and our own crews attempts at disney themed contraptions! :P I won't say much else about the party except that it was epic, and it was also great craic seeing and catching up with loads of people that I havn't seen in years, and of course all the usual faces that appear at all the kayaking events around the country!
The final event of the weekend was freestyle which was planned for Curragower wave in the middle of Limerick city. Unfortunatly because of all the rain there's been recently the wave decided not to show up to the party, however thanks to some quick thinking by Conor Bredin we had a pretty sweet flatwater and downriver freestyle competition. Thanks in part to the atmosphere provided by the Red Bull truck with a massive set of speakers in the roof we had a great morning on the water before we headed back to UL for the prize giving.
In UL we acquired a venue, added up the results, sold a few more t-shirts and got ready to announce the winners of the national kayaking intervarsities 2013! As all the individual prizes were given out the tension slowly mounted in the build up to the announcement of the overall winners. As things went on we knew we were in the running since we were doing consistantly well in all the individual events. I finished up 1st in whitewater, 2nd in freestyle and 2nd in long distance gp but we didnt know if it would be enough to give us the overall title. We were genuinely shocked and delighted when it was called out that we had won the event overall! That's 4 years in a row that ULKC has won the intervarsities which is pretty serious going! At the captains meeting before the awards cermony it was decided that next years competition will be hosted by a combination of 3 Dublin colleges. I wish them all the best with the organisation and hopefully we can make it 5 in a row next time round!
I want to thank all the sponsors of the event, including the Castletroy
Park hotel, Brookfield Hall Student Accommodation and Red Bull for their
support over the last few weeks and months. The Irish kayaking industry
also got 120% behind the event which was very evident at the prize
giving! Wavesport Ireland and I-Canoe donated an amazing amount of
goodies as prizes for the events and 'college of the best craic'
competition run by the Great Outdoors in cooperation with Pyranha also
added a really exciting aspect to the weekend, which was a great encouragement for everyone to make the most of the weekend. Especially for smaller clubs who wouldn't generally have the people to
compete on the river but are more than capable of holding their own on
the dancefloor!
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