Our team just awarded Highly Commended for Best National Sports Section!

Being recognised as second-best Sports Section in the UK is a phenomenal amount of recognition for my work on the 2022 Roses special issue of SCAN: Student Comment and News as Associate Editor and Head of Design.

The team put in so much blood, sweat, and tears into the first full Roses Special Issue to cover every sport (no matter how niche - looking at you Underwater Hockey) and made coverage reflect the significance of hosting Europe's biggest varsity event. After getting heatstroke and passing out under a table with former-EIC Tabi Lambie, this award feels aptly deserved! 

While SCAN had a full editorial exec and large group of writers, special mention deserves to go to the small team who spent all weekend (and the weeks after) ensuring full coverage, editing, photography, and design formatting:

Now-graduate Rhys Wright, former-EIC Tabitha Lambie, and myself ran madly around campus (and miles beyond) to cover match reports, get exclusive interviews, investigate scandals, break news stories, then spent many a 9am-4am editing/design sesh in Tabi's bedroom to put it altogether when the SCAN office was blocked off.

Maria Hill and Ami Clement helped put together lifestyle pieces, food stall reviews, and Niche Sports. James Wilson packed out the Screen section with sports films and TV to make sure everyone was considered. Amy Brook illustrated original art for our back cover and throughout. Thomas Huddleston looked after all of us as Welfare Officer. Charlie Mason supplied the issue with absolutely stunning photography. Tom Jeffreys, Sports Editor, put together the ultimate all-sport spreadsheet that we lived by over the event. And all the sports teams who guest-wrote match reports and coverage for the issue.

It certainly takes a village and we would be lost without the wonderful student journos who made this issue possible. But the most important person of all is our 21-22 Editor-in-Chief, Tabi Lambie, who is the reason this issue happened. She ensured no sport was forgotten, every writer had the opportunity to get involved, and that this issue of Roses would be the biggest and most memorable ever produced by SCAN. Few people have the drive Tabi does and now she has the national recognition she deserves.

This Student Publication Association National Conference (or SPANC to its friends) marks my last as an undergraduate and I couldn't ask for a better finale than walking away with SCAN's first-ever national publication award.

Want to read the Highly Commended Sports Section? Find it here.