With an almost completely new committee working around the clock, 2009 has already seen Touch UM win just under $2000 in prize money. Beginning with a successful summer season, taking out premierships in the Parkville Women’s A, Men’s A and Mixed A divisions, Touch UM headed up to Yass, a sleepy country town outside Canberra, to go head-to-head with some of NSW’s finest. One highlight for many was seeing our own Tim Glazebrook match up against the Australian Mixed Team, which had come down for a summer training camp and had offered to up-the-ante in the Mixed Premier division.
In the end, a tight final between the Touch UM men’s team and the NSW Southern Suns saw the Touch UM boys victorious in the C-Grade division by one single touchdown. Mention must also go to the women’s team, making the B-Grade semi-finals, and the mixed team, getting knocked out in the B-Grade quarter-finals.
The summer continued to hand out successes when Touch UM sent two teams to Colley, Adelaide, for the annual 5-a-side competition. With a different structure to the game and slightly smaller fields, all involved were keen to take home some South Australian cash. Touch UM’s first team remained undefeated across the board, and crushed all efforts at opposition, taking out the A-Grade prize money easily. The second team had a slightly shakier start, just missing out on the second division grading and winning C-Grade comfortably instead.
A week later Touch UM was once again on the move, road-tripping up to Shepparton for the Affiliates’ Cup, a day-long tournament involving affiliates from all across Victoria. As the pride of Parkville, it was time to show everyone why all this prize-money was pouring into the Touch UM bank account. Playing on the greenest grass most Victorians have seen in a while, the Touch UM teams dug deep and fought a long day of touch. One particular highlight was seeing a very green mixed team make it all the way to the grand final and go down in a narrow loss.
But the story of the day was the Parkville women’s team. After only just scraping into the top four to make finals, the Touch UM girls (led by semi-retired Anne “Sparky” Bright), managed to knock off top spot Elwood in a huge semi-final to head into the grand final against Ballarat, who had earlier defeated them easily. After twelve minutes of a twenty minute game, Ballarat was up two touchdowns to nil, and looked to be cruising home. Nevertheless, the Touch UM girls dug deep and found a miraculously late three touchdowns to take out the shield.
The summer season was definitely one for Touch UM to be proud of, but to top it all off, a huge week of merchandise, stressing by Recruitment Officer Michelle Motteram and boys in much-too-tight outfits saw Touch UM sign up an enormous 130 members during O-Week. Trainings since have seen record numbers of attendance; one training squeezing 91 members onto the hockey pitch.
Yes, with many more tournaments to come throughout the year, including sending a team away to the Asian Cup International Championships to be held in Bangkok in June, and the ever-popular Australian University Games in September, 2009 is looking to be Touch UM’s most spectacular year yet.
