By Stefania Zajdel and Maria van Wijnen
AUC recently participated in the annual Paris Tournament, a major European university sports competition that brought together over 800 athletes from over 50 teams. AUC went against top universities, like the University of Oxford, Sciences Po, the University of Edinburgh, and Università Bocconi, in football, volleyball, and basketball. While results from the entire tournament can be found on Catch’s Instagram, notable achievements include the women’s volleyball and basketball teams advancing to the semi-finals, and the women’s football team securing a victory in the final. All in all, every AUC athlete delivered a strong performance and deserves recognition for their efforts.
On top of participating in the competition, AUC’s presence in Paris extended beyond the athletes. A dedicated group of supporters traveled to cheer on the teams, while many more followed the event through live updates on Instagram. In a unique collaboration, Catch and Newscast launched the “Mic’ed Up @ Paris” project, capturing behind-the-scenes moments and insights from players to bring the experience to life for those following from afar.
Annique Quarles van Ufford, a second-year Science major and one of the co-chairs of Catch, reveals how the tournament looked from an organisational perspective. “[The] Paris [Tournament] is one of our biggest events so we started planning it around October of last year,” she says, “It is about much more than just sports. You also get to socialise and meet people from other universities.” She adds that this year, everything went rather smoothly when it came to logistics. Funnily enough, the biggest hiccup was formally getting an invitation to the event. “The tournament decided to wait until November to let us know that we were invited, because they were quite behind on schedule,” she explains.
Once the team had received the invitation, the time came for the Catch board to focus on finding the transport and accommodations. All the athletes traveled together, driving in a rented bus throughout the night. “We loved our bus driver, we are definitely going to have him again next year,” Quarles van Ufford says. The hotel chosen by Catch wasn’t popular among other colleges, so AUC athletes were the only ones there. “The tournament recommended some other hotels, but they were about three times more expensive [than the one chosen in the end]. “But it was fun, since all the athletes were together,” Quarles van Ufford admits.
The invited universities didn’t have to worry about finding a way to connect with the other athletes outside of the games, as the tournament’s organisers, as per usual, set up a bar night on Friday and a club night on Saturday. While many athletes skipped the former in favour of internal team bonding, most AUC players could be seen in the club, where they got to interact with their opponents before playing against some of them the next day (admittedly sometimes with a bit of a hangover).
Quarles van Ufford discloses that taking part in organising such a big event can be quite anxiety-inducing. “From right before the bus showed up, until we were all situated in the hotel, there was a bit of stress. There are always some worries when around 80 people rely on you,” she says, “But after that was all done, I got to enjoy myself and the tournament.” Having been one of the athletes participating in last year’s edition of the event, this time she could experience it in a completely new way. “Sitting outside and being able to watch all the games knowing that you helped create this together with our board was very fulfilling,” she recalls, “And I loved cheering for AUC, especially since we won something.”
With that, she refers to the stunning first place of AUC’s women’s football team, led by Beatriz Souza, a third-year Science major, who agreed to share what the tournament looked like from an athlete’s perspective. She sheds some light on the general structure of the competition. “The [football] matches are eight-a-side and we play three games on our first day, two on our second and then, if we get into the semi-finals we play another one. The finale is the only game taking place on the last day,” she explains. Even though a team doesn’t play against all the universities, it collects a certain amount of points, depending on the amount of wins and the goal difference within a game.
Because the matches are eight-a-side, not all AUC players could take part in the tournament. “We technically have 26 people [on the team], but we had to choose 12 to go to Paris,” Souza describes. The matches aren’t the usual 90-minutes, and instead consist of two 15-minute halves (except for the finale, which includes two 20-minute halves), but with a team smaller than the usual eleven-a-side, it was still quite a challenge for the players. “Most people got subbed, but for the people who played the whole time, like some of our best players, it was pretty rough,” she admits.
In Souza’s opinion, some of the teams were on a similar level to AUC’s. She admits that the teams from the United Kingdom and Paris always tend to be worthy opponents. When it came to her favourite match, she pointed to the second game of the second day. “It was on a grass field, while most other matches were on the artificial field. This made it harder because it was muddy and bumpy, but also forced us to make good passes and creative, well thought-through plays, instead of relying on dribbling,” she says.
In the end, Souza admits that winning in her last year as an AUC student was almost like a climax of her college football career. “Last year, we came very close and my first year was a bit messy, so it felt very conclusive to finally win,” she confesses.
The Herring 