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College Sports Day 2013 was held on the Tuesday of O-Week. The new batch of freshers arrived to enjoy some friendly competition against their hall rivals, as well as impress their new friends with some deft skills in touch rugby, netball, volleyball and football. Dunedin’s unusually good summer form continued without a cloud in the sky all day.

The day kicked off just before 1pm as the halls filtered in. The first few halls came in without a whisper, only for Studholme to come in screaming from the north entrance. This set off a chain reaction from the other halls and the chants continued for over half an hour. Classics such as “fuck Arana” rung out on a regular basis. Some halls got particularly ballsy, moving to within inches of each other as they tried to out-do their rivals. Knox was the last to arrive, bagpipes and all. The locals, uni-flats and the post-grad hall of Abbey College were also well represented.

As they were dispersing to begin the day, I found some lads from a flat down the road with a three-man slingshot and water bombs. Suffice to say (SoGos in hand) they weren’t too interested in the day’s play. However, they did give me a turn, and I’m pretty sure I nailed a small group of freshers. Kind of hard to miss a group of over 2,000 students isn’t it?

Highlights from the day included some amazing skills from the new students, met with roaring support from the bench players. There were also some cringeworthy moments as stray balls flew into the unaware masses and left some lasting marks on a few of the athletes, particularly volleyball and football spectators. Others near the touch rugby fields were oblivious to some players flying down the touchline to score; small crowds of people were intermittently taken out.

Volunteers from the physio school were kept busy with the injuries sustained throughout the day. Those who couldn’t handle the heat were greeted with free water and Gatorade from the water station. Some halls even came prepared with ice blocks. A small ingenious group from Hayward used their “Come at me bro” banner as a sunshade.

Overall it was a great day out for all involved, and a good warm-up for those heading away to the Toga Party later that day.