Gradlympics x Tokamak Tales - Meme competition

It is a well-known fact that memes solve fusion and the good folks at Tokamak Tales decided now was the time to do their bit and host the very first Gradlympics meme competition. The idea was simple - six teams, six fusion-related memes all battling for not only the glory of winning a Gradlympics event, but also the prestige of earning a prized spot on the Tokamak Tales twitter account.

The teams were given two weeks to allow the creative juices to flow and the fruits of this fortnight were far from a dissapointment. All six memes were very high quality, with subjects ranging from the main man himself, Ian Chapman, to Zoolander. 

Whilst all of the memes were worthy or greatness there could only be one winner and for that, a judge was needed. To avoid any chance of Tokamak Tales falling into disrepute over favoritism claims, the help of an external adjudicator was aquired in the form of Bananaelectrons - a fellow fusion content creator.

After careful deliberation the ranking of the six memes was decided, leading to the selection of the top 3 memes:

3rd Place - Team F

 

2nd Place - Team E

 

1st Place - Team C

It was decided that all three of these memes would be posted to the twitter account as it seemed unfair to keep any of these memes from fusion community. All three memes were very popular with the Tokamak Tales followers however one of the highlights was Nick Hawker (the founder and CEO of First Light Fusion) retweeting Team C's meme - apparently it went down very well with the FLF team.

With that, the competition drew to a close. It was great to see the creativity of the graduate family and I'm sure everyone is looking forward to the next Gradlympics chapter.

Gradlympics 2022: The Pub Quiz

Gradlympics enters its 4th iteration this year, and we decided to kick it all off with a good old fashioned pub quiz. The scheme has grown significantly since Gradlympics was first conceived, so we now have a total of 6 teams, and over 100 players!

The team names for this year are as follows:

Team A: The Good, the Grad and the Ugly
Team B: Spicy Beryllium
Team C: H3AT, Pray, Love
Team D: DeuTEAMrium
Team E: Team (E)ter
Team F: Fungineers

And we also got some very fun mascot designs!

Now onto the actual event...

We started with an icebreaker round, as there are so many grads this year! One of the questions was 'Who has met the most famous celebrity in your group?' to which I think the best answer was 'I met the Sonic meme kid' from Team F.

The actual quiz began with some general knowledge, testing grads knowledge of space, the Olympics, politics and coffee. Turns out that the country that drinks the most coffee per capita has changed between 2020 and 2022!

A photo round was next, with some celebs that haven't changed a bit since they were a kid, and some who really have. The Fusion round was hotly contested, with the quizzee's knowing more than the hosts! Apparently JET can't actually get as hot as 300 million degrees, who would have known? The music round then had people scratching their heads with lyrics that had been run through a (bad) Shakespeare translator.

Lastly we had the 'Real or Fake' round, which was not affiliated with Kahoot, despite the slides looking suspiciously similar. I think the trickiest question on this round was:

'Which of the following is NOT a real Australian city?

A: Woolloongabba

B: Wagga Wagga

C: Burrabindi

D: Indooroopilly

 
Did you get it? The answer is C - Burrabindi! JC, one of the organisers, has actually lived in all the other cities on the list. 

 

After all the excitement, there was a brief lull of counting scores before the winners were announced. For this event, the winners were Team D: DeuTEAMrium, followed very closely by Team (E)ter and then Team C: H3AT, Pray, Love in 3rd.

Pub Quiz in the very non-pub environment of the canteen at Culham

Thanks to everyone who showed up both in-person and online and made it a good night!

The next in-person Gradlympics event will be MarioKart, followed by an actual sporting event (we promise!).

~ Written by Sophie Gribben

 

Gradlympics: Closing Report

Here is the story of the final days of the Gradlympics. Previously the scores stood at 6-5 to Oxford. With just two events left, both sides were still in with a chance of victory. Read on for the dramatic conclusion.

Event No. 12: Dodgeball 

The games were drawing to a close. It was time for another unusual sport, Dodgeball. A sport often disparaged, known more for the plight of a moustachioed Ben Stiller than for its Olympic pedigree.

O’Callaghan with his experience gave Oxford a tactical edge. First to five games. Dodging and catching, good. Getting hit, bad. First team to eliminate the other wins. 

Abingdon took a blow early on. Specifically, on Todd’s finger. She was ruled out from further play. Abingdon had lost their most experienced ball handler.

Oxford dominated the first game. It was a quick, clean game with a disorientated Abingdon side barely landing a hit. Cooper was left on his own, looking around with an expression that said “hey, where‘d everybody go?”. 1-0. Oxford did not let up, 2-0, 3-0. There was an obliteration on the cards.

Oxford had powerful throwers in Erskine and Measures with some quick feet from O’Callaghan and Berry. This combination of survivability and lethality was, well, lethal. 

Eventually the gears began to turn for Abingdon, and their slow-starting tactical machine began to run smooth. Two wins on the trot. Abingdon were on a roll, and managed to peg Oxford back to 4-3. 

In the next game Abingdon struck early, and held a lead of 4 players to 3. One more shot would all but secure a deciding game. One more. O’Callaghan went on the defensive, using his favourite tactic of curling up like an armadillo in the corner. Almost impossible to remove. Oxford came back to win. At 5-3, the day was won. 

Dodgeball is certainly a fun, freeing game. One imagines that it would make a fair replacement for anger management classes. Not many games allow such a deliberate and targeted assault on the body. Like boxing, but for those who value personal space and clean eyebrows. 

However behind it lays a layer of strategy. Positioning and coordination of your team is as valuable as a rocket arm. A good team will hunt as one, picking off the slowest, the weakest, like a pack of merciless wolves. Like I said, a fun game.

Event No. 13: Obstacle Course

The closing event of this inaugural games had to be something special. It had to be a crowning moment, it had to be wild. Enter the eccentric impresario Robson, who devised a unique, similarly eccentric, obstacle course. The obstacle course (which I now declare shall be named Robson’s Run) bridged the gap between childhood sports day, drunk student parties and SAS training. A gap that had been begging to be filled. 

Measures and Litherland-Smith led the teams off with the first task, spinning the head on a baseball bat, into a 20 yard dash. Across the teams we saw fast spins, slow spins, and every manner of swaying and staggering. Bookless employed the ground-breaking strategy of counter-spinning before dashing. This event demanded creativity.

The dash led into a cargo net crawl. This was not quite the muddy ‘face in the dirt’ kind of crawl you may picture. This task is a bit more bearable when snaking yourself along a well-kept Oxfordshire lawn. Out the other end the runners were led into the bean bag throw. Referee Quirk, the Nigel Owens of underarm throws, kept order; eyeing up for foot faults.

The egg and spoon walk afterwards tripped a few up - the plastic egg sailing away in the wind like it thought it was a bird. A balance beam walk, using some rough cut planks, got competitors to the end of the course. But they were not done yet.

A full paced sprint homeward led to the final challenge. A nerf gun shot. To a target strung between two trees. Hit it, and you’re done.

A highlight was D Morgan veering halfway to Wales after his spinning. As well as Bookless sinking the beanbag at the first attempt. Or Erskine, finding the bucket on his tenth. As with other events, the distance between the teams was nigh on smaller than a molecule of tritium.

The final pairing was Oxford’s O’Callaghan against Abingdon’s Robson. The fastest graduate against the creator. It had all come down to this. Both raced through the course efficiently, with O’Callaghan slightly ahead. 

The sprint gave the Oxford resident a lead enough for a free shot. A nerf gun shot to the bullseye for victory. It was a big target. Not many had had trouble. But they didn’t have the pressure.

He missed.

Robson, the creator lined up alongside him. They locked and loaded in unison like a spaghetti western duel. This was it. 

Both, missed. 

Cries of anguish from both sides as the players scrambled for another bullet. The tension could not have been higher… 

One player was quicker on the draw. One player hit the target. It was Robson. 

Aftermath

Who would have thought on that mild afternoon in March that this is where we would end.

141 days. 

15 events. 

255 appearances from 28 people. 

Gripping drama, controversy, hours of sporting triumph and painful shortcoming, with two groups that less than a year ago, had never even met one another. Try that for a team building exercise.

Anyone who has tried to arrange a trip to the pub with some old friends knows that by any measure this was a remarkable achievement of commitment and organisation. 

We could scarcely have asked for a more enthralling competition, as full of the ups and downs as any Olympics. A final score of 7-6 to Oxford. A Games well fought. A Games well won.

Given that the teams were squared up basically on their postcode we can really only credit dumb luck itself for the competitiveness of the sporting exercise we have witnessed. That, and a commitment from both teams to fight for their town week on week. No walkovers, no no-shows. 

All was closed out at the after-party with incredible Gradlympic-themed cakes courtesy of Todd. Reward for our wonderful founder and organiser Measures and most importantly the trophy. Awarded to Oxford, who managed to look so rigid in their celebration photo anyone might think the scores were reversed. 

Take a moment please to appreciate the glorious trophy, MASCOT holding the cup aloft, 3D printed. A testament to the innovation of the site, the quest for new ideas, and of course, the inspirational work of Measures.

They may think it’s all over. They may think the game is done. History has been made. But could it be that the Gradlympics has borne out of it not just an event, but a tradition? Only time will tell. Stay tuned...

Gradlympics: June Report

After Abingdon’s video gaming triumph – they led 5-4. Read on for reports from the next three episodes in the sports opera that is the Gradlympics.

Event No. 9: Netball

The Culham Sport and Social Association runs a wide range of social activities open to everyone on site. One of those is netball. It was a fiercely hot day. Seasons change, but the Gradlympics continues. Indeed the Gradlympics had been going so long, new reinforcements had arrived in the form of new graduates. 

As we started our practice, Livesey and Todd seemed stunned that everyone didn’t know all the rules. It seemed most of the men among us had missed out on a childhood rite of passage learning our Wing Defences from our Goal Attacks. 

Abingdon, as winners of basketball, began as slight favourites. But Oxford had reason for confidence. If there was one take-away from basketball it was that in the absence of skill, height is a damn good substitute.

So when Oxford stood taller than Abingdon in 6 of the 7 positions, they sensed an advantage. And so it proved in the early stages with Oxford taking a quick 3-0 lead. Abingdon were lost. They had barely touched the ball. 

There was good play all over from Oxford, but the star was Lukenskas. This was his event. As everyone else struggled to carefully line up their goal shots, he just seemed to drop them in. A deft hand, attached to a bruising body. Hawkes put in a fairly heroic defence in the face of Lukenskas’ aggression. But the score kept rising.

Abingdon, a little shell shocked, knew they had to change approach. With shorter, low bounce passes, they found some breakthroughs. In a very competitive second quarter Abingdon recorded their first scores. But they still trailed as Lukenskas found the net again.

The new faces were putting in very promising performances; Parry-Wright with some excellent catching and Berry with some smooth linking play with Fulton.

In the second half Oxford excelled in the midfield. Todd and Quirk up front were starved of ball as Oxford dominated possession. Their penetrating attacks were converted at an overwhelming rate. 

The game paused when Measures was catapulted into the tarmac. Was his jostling too great, or his legs too speedy? After about 5 minutes, we notice a few conspicuous blood stains on the ball. 

The game ended 10-3 to Oxford. This was one of the most one-sided events of the Gradlympics. Oxford may be ruing Lukenskas’ absence from the basketball. Things were level again at 5-5.

The teams warm up on court

Event No. 10: Laser Tag

This was a long-awaited event. Talk of a laser tag social predates the Gradlympics. Hell it predates most of the graduates. An archived social, revived.

Into a gladiatorial arena walked the twelve graduates. It was very dark, very hot. Dim coloured bulbs lit up a selection of barrels and wooden panelling. The teams lined up beside their bases, setting up guard through peepholes.

Now from a journalistic perspective, when the objective of this game is essentially to hide in a dark room, one can only offer so much as commentary. A round was typified by periods of tense emptiness, stalking and shuffling, punctured by flashes of green and red crossing paths. 

It could be frustrating at times. You could be camped up, hidden with three walls of cover, and lo your body starts flashing. You’d been hit. Where from? Who by? From the darkness. By the enemy.

In the first round Hawkes pressed up high against Moore and Morgan, who held behind the exposed entrance to Oxford’s base. Cooper and Quirk prowled the midfield. Summer placement student Hershmann made darting attacks then retreated. Bookless was the lone defender of the Abingdon base, mainly because no one else had worked out where the base was. 

Out of the arena we quickly looked for a score. We found a lot of large numbers on a screen. It seemed the Cooper was rated 200000, top scoring for Abingdon. Whether that was points, bullets or teabags it didn’t really matter because after a few seconds the scores were gone without trace. Hershmann took top spot for Oxford. Overall, on an unrelated scale, a score of 2300-2100 to Oxford. 

We questioned the scoring system: “It’s too complicated to explain, you wouldn’t understand” our host generously said. 

In the second round people were wiser. They began to realise that the true strategy was to first get a kill which activated automatic fire. Then go full Rambo. Livesey and Oxford attacked more and succeeded in destroying the Abingdon base. A rewarding scoreline. 2400-2000 Oxford.

In the last round Abingdon, with nothing to lose, went all out. Todd kept watch while the rest launched an assault. Oxford’s base, for the first time, was breached. Under such a high press, Oxford tried to outflank them, with only moderate success. Abingdon won 2300-2000.

Cooper was up to 415000. But the top scorer again was Hershmann, a fantastic debut. 2-1 to Oxford. Oxford were back in the Gradlympics lead 6-5.

Abingdon

Oxford

Event No. 11: Pub Quiz

Covering everything from neutron stars, to Dr Neo Cortex, to the peak chart position of “Baby shark”, this pub quiz had everything. Everything except a pub.

The desks were laden with chocolate, sweets and doughnuts. This quiz had food. Delicious, unhealthy food. The graduate scheme panel had put together 10 diverse, testing rounds. We extend a huge thanks to all that helped come up with questions. 

The most interesting and innovative part of the quiz was the split round structure, which made each team choose how to split their squad every round. It gave teams meaningful, difficult decisions on how to distribute their knowledge base. This quiz had strategy. On the front table were the classic quiz rounds such as Music, Science and General Knowledge. Out back had more unusual tests on Culham or Donald Trump’s tweets.

Among the more interesting answers – Abingdon incorrectly solved the dingbat for “A Song of Ice and Fire” as “Sing with the ice cream in the flames”. So close, but also, so not. No team correctly knew the meaning of the acronym OAS. Thankfully for fusion there was more success on MAST-U and ITER.

After the last entertaining round, the teams waited with bated breath. 128-122. Oxford had won. It was over.

But wait. 

Someone put the X-files music on.

A round had been missed. Now 146-141. But that was only the start. Tokamak Tales today brings you a behind the scenes scoop. A sneak peek of the quiz answers.

If you are of virtuous mind you may want to look away now. Some of the images viewers might find upsetting. 

We’ve all seen a wrong answer marked right. But have you ever seen a wrong answer, crossed out, and marked wrong – marked right? Behold. Swiftly followed by Frozen’s Idina Menzel, awarded correct for Oxford, incorrect for Abingdon.

More hope, you would think, for the unambiguous True/False rounds. And yet…

There were more. All rounds bar two were recounted. When accounted for, unbelievably, Abingdon stood 2 points clear. The Gradlympics had gone a couple of rounds without controversy. About time for another. On the one hand Abingdon were ahead, but without a complete recount, things were not confirmable. 

The mobs began taking their sides “Based on the information you have, Abingdon should win!”  “If there are missing answers it's a bit tricky to declare a winner..” “We really can only make a call on the numbers we have received”. 

The president, with democracy failing him, declared a draw. The scores were held at 6-5 Oxford entering into the final two events. Stay tuned. 

Gradlympics: May Report

After the last update, the Gradlympics scores stood at 3-2 Oxford. Read on to hear the results from the past few weeks.

Event No. 6: Badminton

And so, to Badminton. The first task was to select our doubles.

Oxford found their badminton pairings like starry-eyed teenagers. Most memorably Erskine gave Morgan a heartfelt proposal for his hand in racket. How romantic. Abingdon on the other hand, found theirs more through dictatorship. Got paired up with the smelly kid in blue shorts? Too bad.

Oxford had suffered enough weeks being outdressed, and came out with a very fetching breathable navy mesh. It even came adorned with nicknames intended to terrify the opposition, like Shredder, Gainz, and… No Socks. Shudders.

After a fun session of lucky dip, the games were decided. All eyes were on Stuart to start, the most feared among the Oxford team. But losing 9-3 in his first game, things were not going to plan. Ascott and Hawkes thought they had found a winning strategy. But Korzeniowska and Stuart produced a combative, agile display to recover the win 15-12. 

Organiser Stuart was very clear – Most points wins. Not games. After round 1 Oxford won on games, lost on points. In round 2, Oxford won on games, lost on points. Hmph.

There were nail-biting, last point victories for Witty and O’Callaghan and Stuart and Erskine. Oxford had the edge when under pressure. But a big win for Todd and Howe put Abingdon in the driving seat. 

The match of the day might have to be the thrilling spectacle that was Erskine and D. Morgan vs Ascott and L. Morgan. A back and forth contest, with powerful attacking from Oxford. Abingdon’s Morgan showed her experience with fast defensive parries as they overcame a 14—11 deficit to win.

Oxford kept winning games, but Abingdon, like a resolute bloodied boxer, kept taking a lot to be beaten. In the final round, a clean sweep of wins by Abingdon put victory beyond doubt. 168-138 in points. An even 6-6 in games.  

Badminton is, all in all, a friendly sport. There’s just something about the way the shuttlecock drifts happily over the net. Sure Quirk and co. could employ their ‘hit it very hard’ strategy, but overall it was a sport everyone could participate in ably and enjoyably. The close games were good signal of this.

Abingdon

Oxford

Event No. 7: Table Tennis

Quite unlike the good-natured doubles of badminton, table tennis was to be played in unforgiving singles. Raw ability, experience and hand eye coordination were to count. This was a week for the cream of players to stand out. 

And the creamiest of all was Fulton. He lined up the innocent first timers from Abingdon like lambs to the slaughter. 15-0. 15-0. There was only one who could save Abingdon now. One who could stop this. One last hope.

Quirk vs Fulton. This was not just another match. Everything stopped. A hush fell over the crowd as the magnitude of the game dawned upon them. The effect on team morale could be huge. Almost as large, some might say, as the effect on the winner’s ego. 

The play was fast, tense and aggressive. Quirk tested his opponent with fierce topspin and tricky side spin serves. The crowd held their breath in awe. Lukenskas shouted random, unhelpful words; seemingly lost in the moment.

Fulton excelled in defence as much as attack, keeping the ball in play from any position, forcing points to be won, rather than lost. Combining this with strong services of his own, Fulton came through his greatest test 15-10 victor.

Moore, with three impressive victories, supported Fulton in building Oxford’s advantage. But elsewhere Abingdon were gaining small, regular victories. Most had thought Oxford were ahead by a good distance, but the gap had been slowly closing.

The final match pitched Robson against Witty. Rumours spread round that the result was critical. How many did Robson need to win by? Robson pushed the ball around well and built up a lead, but Witty stubbornly kept his tally ticking along. 15-12 to Robson. Was it enough?

Richyal, wielding his spreadsheet like a precious artifact, kept all in order. The result: 270-263 to Oxford. Just 7 points from over 500 played split the teams. Interestingly 12-12 in games, offering some karma from the previous week. 

Your experience of table tennis depended somewhat on which end of the battering ram you were located. The game excelled in evenly matched games across all abilities, but could feel quite punishing as the gap in capability widened.

Darren takes on Adomas

Event No. 8 Wii Games

5pm. Workers had gone home. The graduates were gathered in the area where not long ago, we had been doing interviews and assessments. Now we were casually selecting which Italian plumber we would like to initiate combat with. How times change.

This was a highly anticipated event. For weeks the gamers had been subjecting themselves to all this exercise. Now it was time to rise up and show how to button mash. Mario Kart Wii and Super Smash Bros Ultimate. Two events in one night.

With both the Wii and Switch owners on side, Abingdon began as favourites. After a healthy few minutes explaining what the hell all the confusing numbers meant to the uninitiated, the smashing could start. 

But just before we unleashed the gaming, the maintenance team appeared, and sheepishly began dismantling the ceiling beside us. We looked across in awkwardness as they slowly unpacked a ladder. The poor souls. They even put up a flimsy plastic barrier to protect themselves from the riotousness. 

Punch, Kick, Punch, Spin Kick, Fireball! You wonder what the empty air ever did to us to deserve such a beating. Once both players had finally manoeuvred themselves within a well-timed shoryuken of each other, things started getting interesting.

There were moments of tension in the early fights. There was always a sort of armistice midway through each game as everyone jumped after the big shiny ball. At points it seemed that the most lethal force in each game was a player’s own self-will to swan dive off the side of the map. Meta Knight’s wings proved a saviour here.

Livesey and Morgan pitched Kirby against Pikachu in a colourful battle. There were gasps when the cheery pink orb savagely swallowed the little Pokémon. Pikachu scampered in terror from this hammer-swinging, bubble-gum beast. It came down to the final life, where after a long struggle Morgan dumped Livesey’s Kirby off the edge to win.

Top marks to Litherland-Smith, Witty and Bookless for comfortable wins, but Robson was the star as the only one to manage a perfect 3-0 result. All this amounted to a 27-22 win for Abingdon. 

On the Karting front you could tell who had a real childhood. Why go climb trees when you can wheelie along them on Maple Treeway, right? Experienced riders Livesey and Bookless asserted their dominance on Rainbow Road. Cooper and Todd produced an unlikely win against a strong team in Witty and Measures. From here Abingdon accelerated into a huge lead.

Credit to Witty for then generously giving turn by turn coaching to Korzeniowska, who did her best in a tough field. Abingdon’s strength in depth showed and despite Livesey’s heroics in the final game, Oxford still lost 248-310 in points.

Helena and Leah fight it out in Smash Bros

Faces of concentration along Rainbow Road

So a double win for Abingdon. This has swung the scores on their head, and Abingdon leads 5-4. Reports on the netball, laser tag and pub quizzing to come! Stay tuned.

P.S. Thanks to Stevie and Nik for kindly lending their games consoles!

Gradlympics: Easter Report

The ‘Gradlympics’ has continued. From the last report, the scores stood at 1-1. Here we have the report of the most recent three events – Running, Basketball and Softball.

Event No. 3: Running

Running. It such a pure sport. Completely without complication. No chance of any controversy or disputes. The next time someone tells you such rubbish you should ask them to define a scoring system for a five-event amateur race day and see what happens.

Each point of scoring was agonisingly mulled over. How important is the relay? How far down should points go? Should points scale in a linear distribution or in some form of… hyperbolic function? We did finally agree, but I won’t mention it here, quite simply because I’m scared of abuse from online statisticians.

The event began with a supersized 8x100m relay. It was neck and neck from the start. Well, thinking about it I suppose all races are. But this stayed neck and neck across 8 legs in the most thrilling race of the day. A highlight came as Todd and Livesey matched each other step for step in a fast head to head. Into the final straight Oxford led by a few lengths, but Morgan couldn’t keep pace and Abingdon took it on the line. 

Next came the individual races: 100m, 400m and 1500m. 

The 100m. The title of Culham’s fastest graduate on the line. Oxford’s O’Callaghan stormed out the gates, and never looked back. With Abingdon in second and Oxford in 3rd, it was a James taking Gold, Silver and Bronze. It is quite clearly the best of all names.

In the 400m it was Quirk who led powerfully round the bend, then managed to hold off Fulton and the long-legged Lukenskas. A win for Abingdon.

For the 1500m Morgan and Moore gave impressive performances securing a 1-2 finish for Oxford. Ascott put in a solid race but ended a distant third. The hero of the day though was Litherland-Smith, who in a show of immense team commitment, ran the entire course in his crisp blue office wear. Despite this, the 1500m gave Oxford a commanding lead in the scores.

The stage was set for an Abingdon comeback in the 5000m the following week. But Abingdon were wounded, tired, and frankly shocked at the distastefulness of running during lunchtime. An anti-climax, as Abingdon were forced to forfeit. 

Litherland-Smith and Bookless on the home straight

Event No. 4: Basketball

Next it was time for the graduates to get their head in the game for basketball. Abingdon, with the experienced Todd in charge, started as strong favourites. But the Gradlympics has a habit of throwing up a few surprises.

Abingdon looked like royals on the court. Decked out in matching lush green, fresh off the press. And Oxford? Scruffy. A ragtag crew, by comparison.

Abingdon were quickly practicing with professional lay-up routines. They had confidence, and a three-person advantage. But Oxford had an ace in the hole, a Gradlympics debutant no less.

Erskine strode out, tall-ly. My, he certainly is tall, a stranger might have remarked. And not only that, but one skilled in the art of placing balls into high hoops. With Erskine at the front, Oxford put Abingdon on the back foot from the start.

It was close, closer than any could have predicted. 2-2, 4-4. Then 8-4 Oxford. Todd came off, had a little moan about technical rule infringements, then refocused. She led the recovery, with some good finishes by Ascott, such that at half time the score stood at 12-10 to Abingdon. 

The highlight of the match came at 14-10, when Quirk steadied himself and, almost in slow motion, dropped in the most delicious of 3-pointers. 17-10. Todd dribbled with an appropriate amount of speed. It seemed that every now and again she would get so bored or frustrated that she would just dribble through the entire team and score. At the end of a bruising quarter for Oxford, the score stood at 23-12.

But it wasn’t over. Three quick baskets for Oxford put the scores just 5 points apart with 5 minutes to go. Erskine was on fire. But Todd was the firefighter. Abingdon shut it down and the game ended 27-18 to the bun-throwers. 

It had been fast and energetic. Unexpectedly fun, was the general consensus. Abingdon’s uniforms were dripping in beautiful back sweat. A perfect time for photos! 

Abingdon

Oxford

Event No.5: Softball

Softball is the sport with likely the best claim of being the Sport of Culham. The grads on arrival had heard legends of softball tournaments gone by. Alongside the MASCOT manipulators and In-bore cutting and welding tools, a trophy still stands in RACE’s foyer.

Now softball is not that well known in the UK. So if you haven’t heard, the rules go something like this: If you hit you run. Except when it’s a foul ball. A foul ball is a strike. Except on the third strike. Until the fourth no ball, when you can walk instead of run. If you do run, don’t overrun. Else you’ll risk being run out. Which is bad.

Strikes. What sort of sport names the action of missing the ball literally a verb which means to make contact?

Anyway, on to the game. First ball, O’Callaghan steps up and launches Cooper’s pitch like a rocket towards the trees. But only second base. Measures gets off the mark with a dropped catch. Korzeniowska had some beautiful swings, and some beautiful leaves. It’s just a shame they were in the wrong order.

The images in our heads beforehand of home runs into the cheering crowds were quickly replaced by finickity discussions on what constitutes a valid pitch, and something about stomping. First innings over. A total of 5 scores. Was that good? Literally no idea.

Abingdon’s turn. It was a good start until Robson came foul of three strikes, but otherwise Abingdon worked well, with a healthy mixture of hitting and walking. 7 scored. Advantage Abingdon.

One innings down. Six to go. Jimmy checks his watch. Jimmy does some maths. One innings to go.

Oxford restart their line-up and get back round to O’Callaghan. Cooper this time wants payback, and ups the speed of his pitches. This was effective and Oxford had their backs against the wall with two out. In the face of Cooper’s fireballs they still got the bases loaded, ready for Stuart to get them home. But Stuart was struggling – two strikes, two foul balls. Last chance saloon. He nudges a ball to Quirk who slings it to catcher Richyal. A chance to run them out on a low score. A chance missed.

The ball sails past Richyal and ends up tucked up against blue Ford estate. Oxford jog home for 4 extra runs. Every runner past the line seemed to add a decade to Quirk’s face. Oxford rode their high to the maximum 10 points.

Abingdon had a tough task ahead of them. They had some early success against Witty’s pitches. Bookless had majestic poise as he watched four balls drop at his feet. Hawkes was strutting like Beyoncé as he made it home. But it was not to be. The game ended, fittingly, on a mix up in the running. Victory for Oxford. They take a 3-2 lead into the Easter break. 

Reflecting on another sport over, it was hard not to notice the lack of exhaustion. A few whispered softly under their breath; Softball is really… a lot of standing around. Don’t tell.

The games restart with Badminton. Stay tuned.