Friendly Gala 2024
Friendly Gala is a landmark event in the OUSC calendar, providing the first opportunity for many of our Freshers to don the Oxford cap and represent the university. This year, the event took place on Saturday the 2nd of November, and Oxford’s Blues and Dolphins teams were joined by Brookes, Bristol, Imperial and Warwick.
Despite multiple recent outbreaks of Freshers flu, Oxford was able to field a massive team of 50 swimmers. After a quick pep talk from the captains, Freshers were given their sparkling new Oxford caps, marking their official welcome to the OUSC family.
There was some fantastic racing all throughout the day, but some of the highlights included:
- The Women’s 200m Freestyle, in which swimmers Madelyn Letendre, Annie Oakes, Weiqi Feng and Sophie Boehler took places 1 to 4.
- Carrie Power with a PB in the 100m Freestyle, with a time of 1:08.10 (shortly after a PB the previous weekend at the National Masters Swimming Championships)
- Blues Women’s Captain Charlotte O’Leary with a three second PB and blues time in the 100m Fly, with a time of 1:04.49.
- Ahmed Abushomi with a four second PB In the 100m Freestyle with a time of 58.67
- A nailbiting Women’s 50m Freestyle, in which Dolphins swimmer Vivienne Nguyen took equal first place in her first meet since returning to swimming.
The day culminated in the 8 x 25m Canon Relay, for which Oxford fielded 4 teams and presented 32 very rapid swims.
Overall, Oxford put on a dominant display and won 23 of the 27 events. While everyone swam fantastically, there were also many points for improvement identified by the captains, which will give some strong focus to training in the leadup to BUCS and ultimately Varsity. Following the meet, swimmers headed up to South Parks for the firework display, and then onto Big Society to fill up on some well-deserved burgers and bevvies!
The final scores were:
Oxford A: 241 points
Oxford B: 178 points
Bristol: 171 points
Warwick: 137 points
Imperial: 127 points
Brookes: 111 points
Oxford C: 107 points
Oxford D: 74 points
A huge thank you to club President, Declan Pang, for organising the event, and to all the volunteers who came along to help out!
Next stop: BUCS Short Course.
