As we begin encouraging incoming first-years to join us for this year's preseason, it's the perfect time to reflect on and celebrate all that CUWHC has accomplished over the past season.
While I usually avoid all things numerical, I have pulled together a few key stats to try and capture the success of the women’s side this year. Across our four teams, CUWHC recorded an impressive 44 wins in Saturday league fixtures, scoring a remarkable 199 goals in total. We welcomed over 20 new players into the women’s side during preseason, followed by at least 15 more through freshers’ trials - a huge testament to the growth of the club. Looking ahead, we also have over 24 CUWHC players signed up for this year's tour to Malaga in September, many of which being new to the club this year. This should hopefully mean that we are in a position to play with 2 women’s squads on our full club tour for the first time since its revival in 2023.
Having had such an incredible season, it feels only fitting to turn to our outgoing captains to reflect on their teams’ achievements over the past year.
Wblues:
The WBlues had a very promising start to our National League campaign and, excitingly, had a chance to rise to the challenge and play some amazing hockey against the best university sides in the country in BUCS Prem this year. A very strong start to our Saturday matches saw us sitting at third in the table going into the Christmas break. In March, we made the trip down to London for the Varsity Match. Despite dominating in both halves, we struggled, frustratingly, to break through Oxford’s defensive line and later lost on shuffles, though not without the knowledge that we’ll be able to come back next year with a renewed attacking vigour. Our POTS was Ella Hordern, a defensive stalwart of the WBlues who has dedicated her last six years to the team and become our strongest and most reliable defender. We hope the team she goes on to play for next year realises how lucky they are! Caragh Haspel is set to take up the reins for the 2025/26 season, with Tabitha Evans and Charlotte Lord co-vice captaining.
Georgia Bozianu
Nomads:
The Nomads have had an extremely successful season. We have been promoted in both the leagues we play in, winning BUCS Midlands Tier 2B and coming second in East Division 1 North. Alongside both of these outstanding achievements, we won our varsity game versus the Rads 2-1. It really has been an incredible season. A huge thank you must go to our coaches, Chenyang Li and Frankie Butler, whose dedication across the season has been instrumental in the success of the Nomads. The Nomads squad this year was incredibly strong but the player of the season for 24/25 was Lottie Ring. Her determination to improve and maturity across the season cemented her as an invaluable player to the Nomads squad and is thus more than deserving of this award. To gain both of our promotions we scored a lot of goals spread nearly across the whole 20 player strong Nomads squad, but the top goal scorers with 15 each were Katie Jeans and Emily May. I leave the Nomads in the very capable hands of Amelia Kortens as the Nomads 25/26 Captain who will lead the squad in their debut into East Prem and Midlands Tier 1 BUCS. It has been an absolute pleasure to captain the Nomads this year. I am so proud of each and every one of the players and all we have achieved together.
Emily May
Beds:
This season was a big year for the growth of the Beds as a team, both on and off the pitch. A batch of new faces at the beginning of the season meant it took a bit of time to get our rhythm, which led to a frustrating streak of draws. But once we got our first win there was no stopping us, with some marvellous displays of liquid hockey and triumphs against some of the top teams (we won't mention Kettering). For comparison, last year the beds finished 9th with 22 points and 30 goals scored, this year we ended up 4th after a close battle, with almost double the points (42) than last year and scoring more than double the goals (61). The cherry on top of the season was our decisive 3-0 win against the mavs at varsity, despite only having 9 players on the pitch at one point!
Our players of the season were Ellie Buttery, who was a wall in defence, Siân Rees who was unwavering in midfield and co-captain Alicia McDowell who was also our top scorer for the season, earning her the nickname 'Liss don't miss' for her ability to find the goal, even in the final few seconds of a game.
Alicia and I hand over to this year's very capable Bed's social media sec and Bed's fun sock sec/sprint sec, Harriet Robinson and Anna Smyth respectively, with aims of achieving the promotion that was tantalisingly close this year and having even more fun (if that's even possible)!
Emily Dobbie and Alicia McDowell
Rovers:
The rovers have had a rollercoaster of a 2024-2025 season! With many new faces this year and a new league following promotion last year, the team took a little bit of time to gel. A disappointing but hard fought Varsity loss was followed by a run of 4 consecutive wins in the East Leagues ensuring we successfully secured our place in the league for next year. Liquid hockey was shown by player of the season Selene Corran and newbie to CUHC! We can’t wait to see the reign of 2025-2026 co-captains Kitty Hardwick and Alice Pidgeon!
Rovers love xx #UTFR
Kushi Rao
Many thanks to all our captains for their unwavering commitment and hard work on and off the pitch this past season. All that remains is to say a huge thank you to those other members of the club who have enabled the women’s side to run so smoothly this season: our President, Serena Cole; Women’s Club Captain, Amy Garrod; Women’s Secretary, Emily May; both our treasurers, Sachin Bhogal and Charlotte Bruce; as well as all the other committee members, coaches and umpires without whom the club couldn’t run.
All in all, it’s been an incredible year for CUWHC. It’s been so exciting to see how much the women’s side has grown and I for one cannot wait to see what we achieve next season. Here’s to 4/4 varsity wins in 2026.
GDBO,
Rowan Chantrey
We will do our best to get back to you as soon as possible.
