Students from The
University of Nottingham’s three international campuses came together in
Ningbo, China this month for a week-long festival of sport.
A
unique event within the higher education sector, each year the Tri Campus Games
(TCG) pits 180 students from Nottingham’s UK, China and Malaysia campuses
against each other in eight different sporting events. The sixth annual games
were hosted by The University of Nottingham Ningbo China between 8 – 15 June,
coinciding with the University’s 10th anniversary celebrations
taking place throughout the year.
Rather
fittingly, in the week that the Ningbo
Friendship Bridge was officially unveiled as part of a multi-million NET tram
extension, the TCG is underpinned by the philosophy of ‘friendship through
sport’.
Tournament
Director, Steve Farey explains: “Although
Tri Campus Games is nominally a sporting event, it’s about so much more than
that. Sport is really just the vehicle by which we’re able to offer students
the opportunity for cultural exchange and to build meaningful relationships.
The Games are the perfect example of our global university in practice —
bringing together our three campuses and truly international student body.”
In
addition to the sporting schedule, the host campus also organised cultural
visits for all students to the historical Fenghua City, the eco-tourism area
Tengtou village as well as within the city of Ningbo itself.
Although
Team UK retained the TCG trophy, the competition was often close with each
campus claiming gold in at least one event. Team China’s ultimate frisbee team
also received a special team spirit award for embodying the friendship through
sport ethos.
Team
UK men’s badminton captain James Zhao explained that despite the competition,
the overarching theme of the games was never far from the athletes’ minds: “It’s definitely lived up to my
expectations and probably exceeded them,”
he said.
“I was expecting it to be a lot more
segregated within different sports but we’ve really bonded this week and
managed to make friends in basketball, volleyball, football and all the other
sports as well. I think one of the best memories we’ll have this year is that
the Chinese team took us out for hot pot with the Malaysian team and it was
really good, just eating and chatting all night”.
The
Tri Campus Games is set to return to the UK campus in 2015. Visit
Flickr to see more of the action from this year’s Games.
— Ends —
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Notes to editors: The University
of Nottingham has 43,000 students and is ‘the nearest Britain has to
a truly global university, with campuses in China and Malaysia modelled on a
headquarters that is among the most attractive in Britain’ (Times Good
University Guide 2014). It is also the most popular university in the UK
among graduate
employers, one of the world’s greenest universities, and winner of the Times Higher Education Award for ‘Outstanding Contribution
to Sustainable Development’. It is
ranked in the World’s Top 75 universities by the QS World University Rankings.
Impact:
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