Last week, we made our way to the University of East Anglia (UEA) for Derby Day on Wednesday to see how the Blades would perform. Derby Day, if you’re not familiar with it, is an sports event that happens annually, where the University of Essex go head-to-head with UEA in a range of sports to decide who’s the superior university in in the world of sports. These sports consist of typical activities like Football, Basketball, Hockey, and some lesser-played sports such as Lacrosse and dance.
Derby Day has been historically unsuccessful for our Blades, losing the event consecutively for the previous ten years. So, as we do every year, we were hoping that this year would be our year.
The Rebel team made their way over to East Anglia early on, touching base with LiveWire, UEA’s student media. After some brief introductions and espresso shots, we made our way to different events in the hope that we would see an ample, triumphant Essex performance.
The first game that we got to was Men’s Tennis Double’s, where Blades Ben Hart and Rittik Anand were playing in one of two games. They dominated their sets, making returns and forehands a customary part of their plays, with their success mainly coming from their communication. Although losing, UEA played a good game, returning and backhanding well. Hart’s shot placement was exceptional, consistently targeting hard-to-reach areas and putting power into his shots to make them un-returnable.
The Men’s Basketball was the next spot that we got to, which we were optimistic for, following our victory at last year’s Basketball game on Derby Day, as we took a 97-64 win on home turf.
Although the venue this time was in Hall 1 of the Sportspark, we managed to turn up and replicate our performance, coming away with a greater win. We crossed the three-figure landmark, bringing home a 100-67 win. Essex was slow in the first two quarters but following several turnovers and converted three-point-shots, we managed to get enough momentum to tire UEA.
We travelled to the opposite end of hall next to see how the Men’s Futsal team was getting on. We were greeted an apparent Blades demise. Although they showed promise defending, with the goalkeeper showing his expertise, the Blades lost, even though they were awarded a penalty, which they failed to score from.
As the scores racked up, and reports came through, Essex were stuck on a losing cadence. Having only 3points to UEA’s 12.
Sadly, it was the same old story for Essex, falling short in major competitions like American Football, Badminton and Rugby.
As the competition came to an end, it looked to be a dominant display from our counterparts, delivering 25 points to our 5.5. It was a valiant performance from Blades, but it was UEA who took the win. We’ll see you back on home soil, and we’ll try our best to buck the losing trend!