After tough weeks of campaigning, answering students’ questions and fighting it out for the best cardboard space on campus, Charlotte Winter was elected York Sport President last Thursday.
As anyone could tell by witnessing her ecstatic response, this was a contest with a great deal of heart and hopes riding on it. She spoke exclusively to Vision about her plans for the presidency, the new sports complex and her excitement for the next home Roses.
When asked about her campaigning, Winter highlighted the fantastic support she received, especially from Alcuin netball and the University rugby and lacrosse teams. “There were so many people who backed me, but those teams were absolutely incredible – however, the race for presidency wasn’t easy.
“You get so little sleep, it’s on your mind constantly and there’s the fear that you are not going to be good enough,” she admitted. “There were days when I thought this was the worst thing in the world.”
Winter’s fight for the role was made even harder by the strength of competitor Dong-Oh Shin. Winter complimented her opponent, saying: “he was just so gracious. We got on so well, he is just a lovely person and he ran a fantastic campaign.”
“I think his policies on transport are actually really key.” She plans on emulating Shin’s provisional plans during her tenure, and she is “genuinely brimming with excitement for next year,” as she has wanted this role for “so long”.
The presidency will kick off in October, and Winter has already made big plans for her opening weeks in the role.
“From freshers’ week, whatever our first BUCS game is, we need to let every fresher know. From the off, I want to get everyone interested and aware of what our teams are about and get people down to the 22 Acres and the Sports Centre to support, whether they are involved or not. Basically we need to get a ‘Team York’ feeling that we are lacking.”
One milestone Winter faces is publicity of sporting events. Throughout her campaign she highlighted the importance of campus media and Twitter in addition to running a weekly blog. “It would be nice if we could get members of the committee [to write it],” she said. “For example, this week there is the College Rugby 10s one-day tournament and it would be perfect if I could be writing a blog about it to get people down to the event.”
Another bright idea of Winter’s which addresses the problem of sparsely supported matches is to utilise “the big televisions around campus to cover what is going on. At the moment no one knows what games are being played.” At the moment, these screens are predominantly used for campus news messages rather than sporting updates or fixtures. Vision is certain that students would rather get news on Roses than another YourShop stationary deal.
One of Winter’s biggest challenges, a problem too big even for the great Sam Asfahani, was the complex issue of dwindling college participation from certain colleges, particularly Langwith and Wentworth.
Regarding Langwith, she plans to “get more Sports representatives for them. They have a new area on Hes East so we really want to support them and I’m really hoping to get a rugby team out for them.” She believes Langwith college teams will, from next year, “be fine, as they have the new facilities and increased numbers.”
However, as a postgraduate college, Wentworth faces radically different problems compared to the others. Winter has tactics to respond to their individual need; by scheduling their matches to the last fixture of the day, she hopes to accommodate their different timetables and encourage participation in college sport activities. It’s a simple solution but Winter is prepared to “aid them in any way”. For her, “college sport is the perfect way of building up college unity.”
But the question on everyone’s lips is: How will Winter make the next home Roses competition the best to date? She is enthused rather than daunted by the magnitude of the event, especially about how the Heslington East complex will improve the competition. “I am so excited for Roses. Firstly, we are getting the stadium back and we need to make it even bigger and better.”
She plans to get more societies involved, as “the big thing again is about participation, obviously coming from a college sport background I would love to get as many Barbarian teams involved as possible. Roses is my big thing and I am so excited.”
Winter has promised to dedicate herself to both college and university sport, as well as to other, more obscure sports. Despite admitting she’s “not a massive Harry Potter fan,” although she didn’t want to say during the hustings, Winter has agreed to purchase broomsticks for Quidditch: “If they definetly wanted me to, I would!”
In case this doesn’t convince you of her dedication to the role, Winter continued: “I’ve wanted this role for so, so long and I’m so excited – York Sport is going to have a fantastic year next year, brilliant sportsmen in our clubs, and we have so much potential as a sporting university. “
When asked what her favourite aspect of sport at York, she cited the camaraderie. “Everyone gets on so well. It’s the friendships you make. You win together, lose together. You can’t not love York Sport.”
Curious of her future life as a sabbatical officer, Vision posed the question: “Snog, Marry, Avoid – Kallum Taylor, Graeme Osborn, Chris West?”, to which she laughed, a lot, and exclaimed, “I can’t answer that! But… I would marry Kallum… then the others would just have to fight it out!”
But when Vision inquired into her post-presidency plans, Winter confessed: “This may sound silly, but my dream job would be working as a sports commentator. In football, ideally, but I definitely want to work in sports as my career. “
Winter concluded: “I hope I do half as good as Sam [Asfahani] did because I think he did a fantastic job. I am genuinely honoured to be the new York Sport President.”
A woman as president ?!