Well, a fresh new season often brings with it some changes, and this is indeed one of them – our first ever UPC Blog. But why are we doing this now? And what is it for?
The idea behind this is simple: to provide you with an informal commentary on student pool, to replace our annual reports, newsletters and some other media releases. But we also want to keep this personal, so you get to hear our thoughts and views on the latest issues hitting student pool and sport in general, when maybe in the past you didn't, which in turn will help us to explain our decision-making better and give you a chance to provide us with feedback – let me know what you think, and I will talk about it here in our Blog.
I must now offer an apology – this first Blog will cover a lot of topics, none of which will be in-depth, but I promise later ones will focus on specific points of discussion; whilst I'd happily rabbit on about a variety of subjects all day long, I suspect you'd prefer us to be a little more focused on the subject in hand. That's the plan anyway…
Onto this season then…
I hope everyone has had a good summer, and returned or started at university this autumn with an overwhelming desire to play pool? We have now published our season 2012-2013 details, and I'd like to see all our institutions from last year return, aiming to grow their clubs to even greater levels. This might mean entering an extra team to an event, sending a women's team to Great Yarmouth, or attending the 9-ball for the first time – whatever you view as "development" for your club. As an organisation, the UPC has one basic aim each year – to improve on the previous season. We have found this to be a simple but effective approach to take, one which we hope all clubs follow.
I also hope to see new universities join the UPC network and, whilst they face a different type of challenge, I urge all clubs to ask us for advice with regard to any problems they encounter – we have seen a great many student clubs, from all over the country, develop over time, for better or worse, and indeed we have all been to, and played pool at, university, so we really do have some useful insight into student pool that clubs can tap into. We've tried to collate some of this in our Club Support section, but feel free to ask for advice so that we may help you.
Season 2012-2013 is actually a very significant one for the UPC – our 10th season since inception, which is quite a landmark when you consider the challenges we faced all that time ago, and much credit should go to Dr Iorwerth Griffiths for having the vision to establish the UPC and lay the foundations toward establishing a robust, BUCS-accredited, competitive structure for British pool at university level. It's been tough, especially as the committee were, and still are, unpaid volunteers working on this in their spare time, but it is something we are proud of nonetheless and hope that all players appreciate.
For this reason, we think it is something we should celebrate, and so at the end of this 10th season we do intend to do just that, although the specific plans are still open to debate. Perhaps you can suggest a fitting way to celebrate it? What would you like to see? A one-off social tournament next summer, open to all alumni? Something else perhaps? Please let us know your thoughts and we'll discuss all ideas at the next committee meeting.
I started this Blog by talking about change, and this summer has seen a few other changes that many will not have been aware of. Our England Students Team Manager for many years now, Jon Shapland, has retired from this post in order to join the UPC Board. Jon has an almost unblemished record as Team Manager, failing to win the overall team event only once, and retires as manager of the winning Student Home Internationals team in 2012. England Students are in safe hands, however, as his successor, Will Jerram, is a winning England Students captain and brings with him a wealth of experience in not only individual and team pool at university level, but also in mainstream pool as well. Needless to say, Jon will also bring an awful lot to the UPC committee in the running of our events and so this can only bode well for you, the students, over the next few years. We certainly welcome both and wish them luck in their new positions.
I hope you have seen our article about the launch of Virtual Pool 4. This is a superb game, which also has a coaching element to it to assist your live action play. The design team at Celeris are big friends of the UPC, so-much-so that you may even catch glance of us within the graphics!
Likewise, our friends at GB9 have also announced plans for their new season, including discounts for youth players which some of you may be interested in, and we wish them well in their events too.
Both of these articles, I hope, emphasize our support for the development of 9-ball pool in the UK, and of course our first event this season is the UPC Nine-ball Pool Championships, staged in early December at Rileys' excellent Liverpool venues (Wavertree and Grand Central). We have some big plans for this event, which I cannot quite reveal just yet, but I am sure when we do you will be very excited about the implications.
For this reason, I do strongly urge you all to participate – it is a great event which anyone can win (York, for example, managed to win it without a single American pool table in their city!), and moreover it is a good, social introduction into what UPC events are all about (indeed, after its success last year, this year we'll be escalating the more social Crash Pool competition to provide you with more entertainment during the weekend). The bigger the turnout we get, the stronger will our submission be to gain BUCS accreditation for this event – which means more support and more opportunity for you to not only play in our events, but also the more local intervarsity events organised by others. Indeed, more support for our 9-ball event would mean we can focus more of our energy into bringing local and regional championships to your doorstep!
Of course, a big change I have not mentioned yet involves the much anticipated return of our women's competition. We are delighted to see its return, albeit it did force us into a change in the overall event format, however the overwhelming feedback from a great many universities, clubs and players last season was that you would like to see it return, and we have listened to that, and moreover brought it back with a bang by staging it in the excellent conditions in Great Yarmouth, and offering a special relaunch package – meaning each extra team you enter will REDUCE the overall average team price!
Another benefit is that it now means as many as 30 students from the same institution will now be able to compete (and cheer on their team mates!) under one roof in Great Yarmouth at the 8-ball pool championships – any university who does that will certainly have an edge on any opponent who doesn't! The event itself also benefits – there will be a more diverse, social atmosphere with more banter, and we genuinely view it as the best way forward to promote women's pool across the UK's university campus, building a better environment for student pool players nationwide.
This change in format was obviously taken after long deliberation, taking into account a variety of factors, but as stated above it now means more students from each and every university in the country will get even greater opportunity to represent their institution in Great Yarmouth at the national championships. I honestly believe that any university that promotes a sociable, competitive, and fun atmosphere within their club, and conducts an open, inclusive, recruitment campaign, will find players willing to represent them in all competitions.
In fact, I'd like to set a challenge to all clubs to send a full complement of 3 teams to each of our events – any that do will certainly get a special mention here, but I might even publish a just-for-fun leaderboard based upon attendance! No official prizes, although I'll look into it if there's a lot of universities in contention after the 9-ball event.
Finally, feedback is always welcome, and so please do join our Facebook site and follow us on Twitter – this is the easiest way for us to interact directly with you and answer any questions you may have, as well as get any important messages to you as quickly as we can. It also provides you with a central point to talk to other university pool players from all over the UK, to help our events develop further for your benefit.
Finally (again…) one more thing to say – I wish you the very best of luck with the season!
If you have any comments or feedback on the above, please do raise them by joining our Facebook page and commenting accordingly!
Oliver Dark, Executive Chair, Universities Pool Council
