When it comes to sports there are few events at UP as iconic as UPlympics. Every year around April, student structures across UP’s campus lace up their shoes and dust off their pom poms in preparation for the largest internal sports event on Hillcrest campus. However, this year the student body will not grace the main Hillcrest stadium for UP’s Olympics-inspired event. No indigenous games. No online cycling tournament. No track and field or spirit competition. The question is why?
Key student life events, like Rag of Hope Day, were disrupted this year due to the initial striking by administrative staff at UP, which brought the university to a brief shutdown. It may have been easy to deduce that those earlier disruptions also caused delays in the planning and execution of UPlympics, but it seems this was not the case.
PDBY spoke to the chairperson of the Student Sport Committee, Reabetswe Pooe, to uncover why the beloved event has not been realised. Pooe explained, “The reason why UPlympics has not happened is because of finding a date suitable for it to take place. We had been given a date early in March but due to TuksAthletics stadium not being available, it had to be moved. A date thereafter was not suitable as it would’ve been outside the 2023/24 term or during the curtail time of elections.” So it is as simple as that, a scheduling conflict on a busy UP campus, which is more than common for student structures to experience.
Pooe expressed sadness at not being able to realise UPlympics this year. “It is devasting that UPlympics did not happen. We felt like we weren’t doing justice to the students in giving them a student life event. We, however, must remember that things are done via procedures. We frequently communicated with our manager to ensure that we do not overstep/skip steps in executing this event. We are sorry to our students at large.”
The committee was looking forward to furthering their commitment to inclusivity and accessibility in sporting events with UPlympics. This year, Student Sport featured goalball at both Rag of Hope Day and the Blazer Squad Tournament. Usually, UPlympics features braille chess and indigenous games, making it both accessible to visually impaired students and culturally inclusive. Plans to further inclusive participation in UPlympics was also in the works, says Pooe. “We were planning on making it a more inclusive event in terms of having an ‘individuals’ team because for track and field events, we’d only take two [or] three students from a structure because of time constraints […]. This was all because we wanted to have more participants and include students that are UP registered but not in the known structures.”
While 2024 missed out on UPlympics, it was still filled with sport tournaments and internal leagues that surely satisfied the sport-inclined students of UP. A major thanks to the 2024 Student Sport Committee for its contributions to student life. We look forward to UPlympics in the year to come and to covering the 2025 champions.
