Team Sunderland: “Safety of students paramount”

Team Sunderland is the offiical University of Sunderland sports body.

UNIVERSITY sport is a huge part of student life, but Team Sunderland, are not risking their students’ health to get competitive sport back.

Chris Thornley, communications support officer for Team Sunderland and one of the university’s sports journalism graduates, has said that the university is unlikely to see any competitive sport until at least 2021. 

Team Sunderland, the University of Sunderland’s official sporting body, competes in the British University and College Sport (BUCS) competitions, but the official university sporting body have put all sporting events on hold until next year.

Chris said: “There will be no BUCS sport until January at the earliest. There is no competition until then because of the spread of Covid.

“The worry for universities is that moving students around different campuses around the country could lead to outbreaks and be a risk to the health of our students.”

The other issue that university sport will have to deal with is the regulation of national bodies.

Chris said: “There is also the issue that a lot of sports are regulated by the national bodies, so we have to adhere to their rules. Therefore it just made sense for BUCS to postpone all sports and not take any risks with endangering the students.”

Team Sunderland, however, is keen for students to continue joining their clubs, and have been trying to keep students as active as possible into the new semester. 

“As a University, we have decided to make all of our clubs free until January, just so students can continue to train if they want to,” explained Chris. 

“The safety of our students is paramount to any decision we make, which is why we are not running training sessions yet because of the latest Covid figures on campus.”

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