The Year of student sport (YOSS) has been a yearlong campaign driven by student leaders all around the country. At the beginning of this year opportunities for Jewish students to participate in sport on campus were few and far between, but through a united and continuous effort from student leaders and with financial support from a new partnership between Maccabi GB and UJS, the opportunities
for sport have never been better.
The campaign has been spearheaded by Jewish Society football and netball teams across multiple campuses, who were fortunate to for the first time ever receive subsidies from Maccabi GB and UJS. Through large-scale student fundraising events, social media, photography, and written media The Year of Student Sport campaign has pushed university sport to the forefront of Jewish life on campus. All this has been done with the aim of ensuring that sports opportunities like this are plentiful in the future and that other sports and Jewish athletes can hopefully receive the same support.
Thanks to the tireless work of student volunteers over £7,500 was raised for Jewish charities, Jewish sports opportunities spread across 6 cities and JSocs gathering over 200 students sign ups within this first year of the project.
In Birmingham, the Jsoc’s football team Maccabi Selly Oak have been heavily involved helping to lead the way for more jewish university sports opportunities. Sam Ucko alongside Josh Summerfield and Marc Smith, were all instrumental in hosting and organising the campaign’s first charity event between Birmingham JSoc and Leeds JSoc in November 2022. The event successfully raised over £3,000 for the Shalva charity in Israel and paved the way for more sports to begin their own fundraisers. Following the success of the event, Ucko moved his focus to creating equal opportunities and helped found the only Jewish women's university football team in the country. Sam and the newly formed Maccabi Selly Oak Woman’s team have actively campaigned to create a women's intramural football league in Birmingham and over the next year will help drive the creation of more Jewish women's university football teams across the country.
In Leeds, Jasper van Veen, manager of Hapoel Hyde Park, has been an important leader, supported by the dedicated work of Noah Meszarich and Jake Lanzkron along with the rest of the squad. Hapoel is one of the more established Jsoc Football teams, and has been heavily involved in organising fundraiser events during the year, it collaborated with other Jewish teams in different cities to raise over £6,000 across its two campaigns. A large facet of the team’s success came from the dedication of its media team led by Jonah Lazarus and Alex Mandel, who published and documented the team’s progress through social media, photography and journalism. In March, Jasper created the ‘Doing it For Daniel’ campaign, working with three other teams across Leeds and Nottingham, the students put on an event which took social media by storm producing one of the biggest Jewish student social action campaigns of the year. Around 130 students were in attendance with 100s of friends and family members watching live streams of the event, over £3,500 was raised for the charity.
Nottingham JSoc has played a key role with the prevalence and popularity of the Notts Jsoc Netball Team as well as their newly founded Jsoc football team, Lenton Orient. Jenna Morris who managed the netball team was nominated for UJS’s volunteer of the year for her involvement in the campaign, Jenna has been a driving force in the Jewish netball movement, thanks to her passion and commitment many new Jewish teams will be forming across campuses next year. The football and netball teams travelled to Birmingham in May for an event coordinated with the help of students Alife Keene and Alex Cohen. Together with Birmingham Jsoc, the teams managed to raise another £1,500 for charity, this time in support of the Ollie Leigh Trust.
The Year of Student sport campaign has redefined what being a Jewish student on campus can mean. Sport forms a large part of many Jewish identities and now Jsocs have the ability to use this as a vessel to help students create bonds and form friendships. JSoc sports have brought people together in an unimaginable way, giving students the opportunity to collaborate on events, create social action campaigns and form close connections with other Jewish students. The campaign has allowed Jewish societies on campus to be more inclusive by catering to the demographic of students who connect with the community in this way.
There are currently 10 affiliated teams across 6 campuses supported and with the opportunities expected to expand into 9 campuses for the start of the next academic year. The newly formed Student Sports Committee will oversee the rebranding of the project and look at new avenues to expand the current opportunities available to Jewish students in sport.
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