Students & cuesports, the perfect match?
Was there ever a more suitable sport for students than cuesports?! They seem to fit perfectly:
It's an internal sport so the dark & damp weather during term time doesn't matter.
It's gender neutral. There's no advantage to being physically stronger so everyone within any student's social group can't participate equally.
There's minimal cost involves, (a bit of a stereotype of students here, but I was one once and I know money can be tight!), and most venues provide cues & chalk.
Facilities are normally available during those daytime hours when students may be between classes.
It's the perfect downtime activity when you just need to get away from the books for a couple of hours.
It's a great social activity! You get to know more people in your campus by spending a few hours of match time with them.
Recent struggles
However, in Ireland the student cuesports scene, (snooker in particular), has struggled to get traction in recent years. This could be due to a number of factors:
A lack of facilities, either on campus or within the locality.
It's difficult to organise competitions and to communicate the details of those competitions to the student body, for both internal competitions & inter-varsity competitions.
A lot of sports in universities rely on a cycle of students taking ownership, e.g. final year students encourage Freshers to join and get involved, and by the time those Freshers are in their final year they're running the club and integrating the next group of Freshers in...and the cycle begins again. Unfortunately in a lot of cases Covid 19 broke this cycle and it may take a major effort to get it back again.
The overall admin required to run a student club can be time-consuming.
There isn't a formal inter-varsity league or national competitions in place. Again this is probably due to the difficulty in organising these competitions & communicating updates to all parties.
Let's do something!
At PackOfReds.com we love a challenge though! We're going to revitalise student cuesports here in Ireland using our platform.
We're already working closely with a number of 3rd level institutes across the island to revitalise an All-Ireland snooker competition for 2023 & 2024, (Maynooth University & University of Ulster are already driving this).
We're keen to speak with anyone who would like to create a club within their campus. (NB: You don't need to have facilities on campus, we'll link you up with existing clubs).
We'll show you how the PackOfReds platform takes all of the admin duties off your hands, meaning more time for you to enjoy with your club members.
We'll help you with:
The promotion of your new club
The organisation of competitions
A handicap system for all of your members
Competitions with other 3rd level institutions
Opportunities to compete at national level
Just contact us at info@packofreds.com or Whatsapp/call us at +353 87 409 6752. We can't wait to get you involved!
Comments