The Blue Bird Column: Week 2

Original to be found here: http://www.bluebirdnews.co.uk/sophie-clarke-week-2/

I had such plans for this week’s column, such plans. First I sat through a Women’s Blues Committee meeting, and was going to write about Korfball, parity in and between sports, and the half blue divide, but the Tab got there first. Then I had the bright idea to write about Heather Watson’s comments regarding menstruation and sport but quite a few people discussed that better than I ever could. By Thursday I was trying to write a column based on the phrase ‘summer bodies are made in the winter’ but my disgust made every piece I wrote very short, because it turns out bodies are bodies, our bodies, and I don’t much care what season they are ‘suited’ for as long as it does what I need it to do (push people under water, throw weights around, run marathons) and I take care of it (should probably leave off the sugar, it does nothing for recovery time).

So now I’m stuck. I could recourse back to some old favourite topics: why doesn’t Cambridge University have a swimming pool? Why don’t Ryder and Amies stock women’s Blues blazers? Why can’t I resist Reese’s Pieces? (It was the saddest day of my life on Sunday when I saw they’d replaced Reese’s with mini eggs in the plastic bowl halfway down the self service queue in Sainsbury’s.)

But the best laid plans ‘aft gang agley’ so:

TOP THINGS I HEAR ON SWAPS I’d like to publicly call out the boy from horse polo who was meant to turn up dressed as Wooster to last week’s swap. My Jeeves outfit was amazing and you really missed out. Super poor form.

1. ‘So what do you do?’

2. ‘Wait, so you’re how old?’

3. ‘No, really, how old?’

4. ‘So you’re actually a real Blue?’

You would not believe the amount of times, especially later in the night at dinners and things, people just assume you’ve nicked the blazer. Yeh, I know it looks boxy, and on swimmers shoulders it’s a genuine issue. Where’s the petition for getting it cut differently if you want already?

5. ‘Is [NAME A SPORT] really so difficult?’

Let’s have you try it, and we’ll see.

6. ‘Are all your team lesbians?’

Why is this a question? Genuinely why are you asking me this?

7. ‘How often do you train?’

The worst bit is when you answer, and get a sort of pitying head shake in return. Oh, poor girls. Can’t handle any more. See above: why doesn’t Cambridge have its own pool?

8. ‘Why don’t you shave your legs/your pits/your bikini line? Do you do it to scare the opposition?’

Ok this is actually a question I get asked at matches rather than swaps – no, I’m not even lying. Manners truly are dead. Oh. My. God. I’ve played in mixed matches where a boy has genuinely recoiled in horror at grasping my leg and finding it not smooth. I’ve also had my fair share of see through swim costumes, especially a couple of years ago when we dealt with a couple of fairly rogue comments about ‘new hairstyles’ from several of the men’s team. Urgh, grow up. Have you ever thought about how much effort remaining hairless is, and combined with the fact that you’re always showering at the pool/the gym/the boyf’s it’s a nightmare. Maybe it does have the fortunate effect of scaring the opposition. Or maybe I’m just super lazy. Maybe it’s Maybelline.

9. ‘Could you beat me in an arm wrestle?’

No, but Rosanna O’Keeffe probably would.

10. ‘Do you want a drink?’

Oh, go on. Twist my arm, I’ll have a tequila – here’s some cash.

The Blue Bird Column: Week 1

Original to be found here: http://www.bluebirdnews.co.uk/sophie-clarke-week-1/

Last week, I lost my voice. If you no longer had ‘loud’ as one of three words to describe me I think you’d be struggling, so this was a bit of an issue, especially with 5 more training sessions to run.

I ended up mute because my team had two matches two nights in a row on our training camp in Edinburgh. I was in goal because that is a captain’s sacrifice when your normal goalie is not present and others would rather contract smallpox than end up between the sticks. Being in goal offered the unusual advantage that I was no longer too out of breath from playing to shout at people properly – so shout I did, encouraging on the ladies of Cambridge’s water polo team.

Sport grabs us because it makes us passionate about it – about watching, about playing, about becoming part of it. In this case I was so involved I shouted myself hoarse trying to get the team to play better, to score more goals, to put up a fight and ultimately to at least try and win (even though that aim, when playing against teams with several national players, was always a pipe dream).

I’ve always been caught up in the dramas of our play – I’ve always been one of the more easily heard members of the team, right from the start of my water polo career – but increasingly I find myself ever more tied up with the team’s fortunes, which is not least because this year I am the captain. I thought, before I took up the mantle, that I knew what it would be to lead, having been a senior member of the team (read: old, been around for ages) for a while, and having been close friends with several CUSWPC captains over the years.

However I have found that to captain is to invest in each player not just for this game but for the next; not just this season but those to come. When mistakes are made, as they always are, I see the potential and hard work behind the decision and the unfortunate turn of events which swings it in some unforeseen direction. I worry about all my players, think deeply about team lists when previously I would have dashed off my preferred thirteen without hesitation, and look to build a strong base for next season even as it means shelving dreams of repeating last year’s success. These may seem like obvious lessons but I feel like I’ve always been caught up in obsessing about my own performance and contribution to the team in the past to worry about anyone else’s.

I’m not sure I’m a particularly good captain – I’ve been told I’m too harsh, too caught up in wanting to win – and I’m constantly seeking feedback from my team so I can improve, or at least pass on some tips to my successor. Yet I feel like the ultimate judgement of my captaincy is if in five years, at least a few of the girls who turned up in October having never even tried water polo before are still training, still playing, still competing. I never found a sport I loved until I came to Cambridge – and even then, it took me until my third year to find water polo. To love a sport and dedicate your time to it is to let loose your passion – and sometimes the only way to do that is to sit in goal, and shout, and shout, and shout.

It's 2015!

Bizarre. Someone told me that 1998 is as far away as 2030 now - in 2030 I'll be 40! In my mind that's basically decrepit, but something tells me I should adjust that way of thinking.

I have a few resolutions - they're nothing big, really.

1. Make steady progress on my PhD.

Self-explanatory really - I just want to keep plodding along, doing the reading, the writing, the papers, the research - and just make progress with which both my supervisor and I are happy.

2. Develop a strong core.

My core is terrible and I am so lazy that I often don't work on this. It's something that would help my running and the water polo and everything really so my aim is to strengthen my core. More Pilates! More yoga! More planking!

3. Make 2015 the year of finishing off.

Scrapbooks, novels, academic papers, other non-academic bits of writing, books, fixing my typewriter - I have so many projects which require a bit of work and application to finish them. So 2015 is the year for new ideas to be put down the order of priority and for me to finish those things which are cluttering up my academic and personal life (as well as physically cluttering my room!)

4. De-stuffocate

'Stuffocation' became known to me as a term through this Telegraph article  and when I moved over the summer I had a ridiculous amount of stuff - not including books - most of which I don't use within a 3 month period, so it's time to stop that right now and clear out some clothes and belongings.

5. Read more books!

This is always on there - I'm aiming for 122 and also aiming to include this list. It's a bit lame but I always like a challenge and there are several books on there I would not push myself to read normally.

Doctoral Delusion column: Sports Sadness

Original to be found here: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/columns/0032793-doctoral-delusion-sports-sadness.html

I need someone to take all the sports off the telly, please. Also someone to do all my marathon and water polo training for me. At the moment, sport is the biggest distraction to my thesis. If I’m not watching it, I’m training to compete in it. Wimbledon, the Tour de France, the Commonwealth Games – I’ve enjoyed every minute, almost definitely to the detriment of all the writing I’m supposed to be doing.

I can’t help it, I just love sports. If you’d pegged me when I was 18 and told me that six years later that was something I’d be saying, I would have walked into a wall laughing. I hated sports at school. I didn’t grow above 5 foot 2 until I was 18, and my competitive drive went into academia. It doesn’t win you many supporters in the PE department when you just don’t care.

Also, I think my teachers thought it was funny when I could barely put the shot past my foot, and when I hit myself in the head with a javelin. (Admittedly, that was hilarious.)

But Cambridge had a funny way of putting sports right in front of me, like it does for so many people, and since then athletic endeavours have filled a substantial part of my life. Most of them have been team-based, and it’s here that the summer falls down - undergraduates are the driving force behind 90% of Cambridge’s sport, and when undergraduates aren’t here, the sport stops. There are town clubs, most notably for rowing, but also for other sports, and there are the exceptions; grad colleges like Hughes Hall and Darwin run graduate sports throughout the summer.

Largely, however, the sport is gone, and with it, a ready made chance at socialising. Training on your own is lonely, boring, and not as effective. Other people push you to do better – academics or sports, that’s just the truth. I’m a slow runner, and my last long run was 15 miles, on my own. That’s two and a half hours with no one to talk to, and my iPod gave out on the last three miles. Faster, better runners than I undoubtedly aren’t bothered with this, seeing as they don’t run with music and they have pacing and splits and the will to go faster.

I, unsurprisingly, do not have the will to go faster. I have the will to grimly hang on for 15 miles, preferably whilst talking to someone, and if I’m training on my own that small pleasure is denied to me. Come back, undergraduates. All is forgiven – your peppy youth, your swarming tendencies, your essay crises. I need someone to train with, or that grandma who I lapped on my last run is going to set her Jack Russell on me. I can’t stave off a terrier attack on my own. That’s one sport I just can’t get along with.

(5) Days of Summer

Full article can be found here: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/features/0032734-5-days-of-summer.html

I receive my Finals results and they’re not good. I find myself a job in Finland, some backwater town where there’s a summer school teaching Russian kids English. It’s sunny, all day, almost all night too, and the college we teach at backs onto a river. There’s a pier. I spend most of my first two weeks gloriously tanning there, reading my way through my new Kindle, after we finish teaching at 2pm. I go swimming in the river and can tell when I should go home by watching the sun dwindle down over the bridge.

Later, we re-enact the American Civil War with children, get drunk off vodka the teenage students provide for us, and begin surviving only off rye bread and black coffee as all the other food provided is just too Russian. But the best part is always The Vaccines in my ears,How to be a Woman on my screen, and my sun soaked skin.