If you want to get active and meet new people, we might have found the place for you. Pat Alderton has discovered a community at UON that just want to be sporty without the competition.

Joining a new sporting code or club can often be daunting. You may be filled with the usual anxieties surrounding whether you’ll be good, or if your teammates and you will get along. This is why, more often than not, the only course of action taken is no action.

University of Newcastle student Monique O’Brien was faced with this exact predicament; wanting to join a club and get active again, but not knowing which sport to play or who to join. It was a lunchtime conversation with friends that hatched the idea of not joining a club and not registering for one particular sport. This conversation was the catalyst for the birth of UON Casual Multisports, a group designed to give everyone a taste of new sports and new people, without the financial and social pressures of registering.

“The idea for the group began when I realised that I missed playing casual sport on a lunchtime at school, we used to just take a soccer ball out for the break and run around, it was great!” Monique said. 

The group organises weekly meetups at Jesmond Park, where students and friends alike can get together and try their hand at a number of different sports that operate on a fortnightly timetable. Boasting over 200 members already, one fascinating part of the group’s rapid growth is its inception. A letter submitted to UON Love Letters on Facebook that blew up led to hundreds of students joining the group.

“I thought we may have 20-30 people interested, I was really just hoping we would have enough for a team! When the post went up, we had almost fifty people interested within the first twenty-four hours.” 

Monique was never expecting such an enormous turnout for the group, but as it turns out there were truckloads of people who felt exactly the same way as her. As a result, UON Casual Multisports has already made an impact on students who want to be active. Although they are still only in their early days, this community is firming as an excellent way for students to get involved in a low-pressure, fun environment and make new friends.

Students of all ages are welcome to join, and encouraged to bring friends along to meetups consisting of sports for all people.

If you’re interested in being a part of this rapidly growing community, you can find the group here!

Feature Image: Yogendra Singh via Pexels, no changes made.