Sheffield Arrows came out victorious in the University Championships, after defeating Birmingham 12-4 in the crowning moment of the season.
The dodgeball team came into the tournament after an impressive league season, where both the first and second team won their respective leagues.
Despite the spectacular league finish, Arrows player Brennan O’Regan said that winning the University Championships was definitely the pinnacle of this season.
“This was really the high point of the season. This year we’ve won our league, our second team won their league, we’ve won various other tournaments, but beating Birmingham has always been the step above for us.
“As a team we just gelled, and we played really well and were just on it.”
After cruising through the group stage, the real test came in the semi-final, with the Arrows having to go through on sudden death.
“In the group stage we weren’t tested that much, but in the semi-final it came down to a sudden death, meaning that it was even after full-time and that the first team to knock out a player on the opposing team would win.
“That was a very stressful way to get to the final but it was worth it in the end.”
Having already played Birmingham several times but narrowly missing out on the win each time, the Arrows came into the final hoping for a change of fortune.
“We’ve played Birmingham four to five times this year and we’ve always been within one set of winning. So the team talk before the game was basically just to play how we play and on the day, we got hits that we wouldn’t have got on the other days and everything just went our way.
“We’ve been the only competitive team to challenge Birmingham throughout the year, so having previously lost against them this year was just tough to do, but finally being able to beat them now was such a good feeling.”
Although it’s still some time away until next season, preparation is already underway, with the team looking to promote more players from the second team to the first.
“Next season is going to be weird, we’re losing some of the key players in the first team so our big goal for next year is development.
“This means developing second team players into players that can play in the first team and hopefully getting the entire club to a level where it would be really difficult to choose the starting six.”
