Charles Darwin University (CDU) Sport sent a group of 30 students to the Northern University Games on the Sunshine Coast held 2 – 6 July, winning bronze in AFL.
Competing in AFL, women's volleyball and mixed netball, CDU was up against some great competition with around 2000 students hitting the Sunshine Coast to compete in over 19 sports.
The CDU AFL team trained for five weeks prior to departing for the games. Consisting of four NTFL players – three from Uni Rats TEAFA and the remaining with little or no experience, including one international student who pulled on the boots for the first time, coach Rick Hall (AFLNT) had some work to do!
The competition was made up of Queensland University of Technology, The University of New England, Bond University, Australian Catholic University and Charles Darwin University.
The team played five games over three days with the finals played out on Thursday 6 July.
CDU came up against Australian Catholic University (ACU) in the bronze medal match, winning their first and only medal of the games defeating ACU 52 to 27 with our big American import kicking his first goal in AFL!
CDU’s women’s volleyball team trained for seven weeks prior to the games with some coaching tips from Roger Jones. The team worked hard putting in a lot of effort throughout the competition, sometimes playing up to three games a day.
The girls played off for fifth place on Thursday 6 July against Bond University winning 3 to 0. CDU’s Vanessa Mounsey was a stand out picking up a merit award.
With the mixed netball team aiming to better their ladder position of eighth in 2005, CDU started the competition on fire. But towards the end of the tournament with a few injuries and some of our male team members playing AFL we ran out of legs.
CDU fought it out with QUT2 for seventh position winning 45 to 25 – great team effort by all.
CDU achieved tenth overall at the games out of 15 participating universities – congratulations to all who participated.