Uniquely Southampton

Did you know that the UK Campus has more than a 100 times more students than the Malaysia Campus?

Which is why they are able to have a whopping total of 314 clubs and societies.

The university’s Bunfight is a day-long event where all the clubs and societies set up booths across various venues to try and recruit clueless but enthusiastic freshers or non-freshers with nothing better to do. Attending the Bunfight at the start of Year 3 was a culture shock for me having come from the relatively (much) smaller Malaysia Campus.

There were also the taster sessions that were held across the weekend before the term started where some of the sports clubs had open sessions which gave students a go at the sport. I recommend going for as many of them as possible even if you don’t plan on joining any!

Now I would like to introduce several of the sports which I had found pretty unique.

Quidditch

If you have not heard of it, find me and I’ll gladly lend you some books the sport has been played for several 100 years by wizards and witches in the world of the Harry Potter books. However, in the Muggle (ordinary humans) world, it has only been about 13 years.

Reminded of how bad the CG was back then.

I did not attend the Quidditch club’s taster session but I did get the chance to watch them play as they had their weekly sessions at the same time and place as the Frisbee club. Whoever arrived first got the better spot on the field though.

I do consider myself a fan of the whole Harry Potter franchise and although I did enjoy watching Harry and friends play Quidditch in the films, running around with a broomstick between one’s legs for the sake of following the books is still hard to comprehend. Slamming a ball at another person at such a close range looked absolutely painful as well.

That aside, I would like to try playing a game of Quidditch someday.

Canoe polo

A game of canoe polo is similar to handball except to make things harder (because that’s what sports do), you’re paddling around in a canoe/kayak. The difficulty level just intensified.

I’ve only caught a glimpse of a training session at the swimming pool over at the Jubilee Sports Centre once but boy, did it made my weak arms feel dejected.

Spikeball

The only sport on this list that I have tried. All you need to play Spikeball is a mini-trampoline (which the players stand around), a ball and some space. The game is like a mix of volleyball and table tennis except instead of hitting the ball over a net to the opposing team, you bounce it off the trampoline. With the ball being able to rebound towards any direction around the circular trampoline, one may need to dive to the ground in order to return the ball.

As a person with years of experiences tripping over things and enjoys throwing oneself to the ground for the sake of sports, Spikeball has brought me great joy.