It’s that time of the year for the University of Gloucestershire as both their men’s and women’s sports teams alike get ready for the annual varsity events as they take on the University of Worcester next week.
First-year Ben Stevens looks ahead to next week’s event as he is set to compete in his first varsity competition.
“I’m really excited ahead of my first one, 2024 has been really good to us with a couple of good results. We’re all very excited going into Varsity now.“
Stevens spoke on the recent improvements that UoG Hockey have made as this year’s varsity competition approaches.
“The Training is all going well, We’ve got S&C (strength and conditioning) which is really helping as you can see the fitness is improving within the squad, it’s good fun and we’re getting the work done.“
UoG Hockey picked up their first win of 2024 in a 5-2 victory against Solent three weeks ago.
Stevens is set to be included in this years Varsity squad, with the entire list set to be announced later on today.
The forward briefly spoke about the achievement of being part of the squad as a first-year.
“I’m very happy, but also relieved at the same time , because in the last training session before the squad was announced, I didn’t have the best performance in training so I was slightly worried that maybe I wouldn’t make it but I’m delighted to be in the squad.”
Varsity is the most important fixture of the year for the University, and Men’s hockey are hoping to right the wrong’s of last year.
“It means so much to us as a squad, we lost last year for the first time in almost 20 years, so going into this it’s massive for us to get another win and restart that unbeaten streak, that would be brilliant.”
UoG hockey’s fixture will take place this time next week on March 18, with the women’s fixture taking place later that day.
