As a rug­by play­er with fif­teen years’ pitch expe­ri­ence, my involve­ment in the life of UTC team was an obvi­ous choice. As ear­ly as my sec­ond semes­ter at the school, a friend, Hadrien Gleyze, and I took the reins of the team as co-cap­tains, an adven­ture that we under­took with deter­mi­na­tion and self-reliance.

At UTC, we val­ue learn­ing through first-hand expe­ri­ence and our mis­sion is not lim­it­ed to that of mere ‘play­er-lead­ers’.

Man­ag­ing a uni­ver­si­ty rug­by team is a major under­tak­ing, involv­ing the organ­i­sa­tion of match­es (for­ward plan­ning, book­ing of pitch­es, trav­el logis­tics, etc.), as well as man­ag­ing the admin­is­tra­tive aspects that go hand in hand with run­ning a sports club: such as licences, equip­ment orders and cre­at­ing events. This com­plex task requires inter­ac­tion with many play­ers, such as the Fédéra­tion Française du Sport Uni­ver­si­taire (FFSU), Compiegne’s town hall and the UTC sports hall. 

Hadrien and I also tried to bring our per­son­al touch to the team. Thanks to the finan­cial sup­port of UTC, we were able to acquire new game shirts for our team. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the French sports brand JICEGA, we came up with the design. We would like to express our grat­i­tude to this com­pa­ny for its invalu­able sup­port. At Com­pieg­ne, we also approached local part­ners, who gen­er­ous­ly con­tributed by donat­ing tank tops to all our team members. 

These activ­i­ties, although time-con­sum­ing, are also extreme­ly grat­i­fy­ing. Meet­ing the expec­ta­tions of forty team-mates who are count­ing on you is an excep­tion­al source of moti­va­tion. Our ulti­mate aim is to strength­en team cohe­sion by pro­mot­ing the val­ues that rug­by cher­ish­es, such as sol­i­dar­i­ty, con­vivi­al­i­ty and respect. Today, we’re not just a group of play­ers, but a real ‘band of mates’, and that’s what makes us so strong. Our club is also for­tu­nate to have a women’s team, with whom we share strong bonds of friendship. 

After the dif­fi­cult peri­od marked by the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, I’m extreme­ly pleased with how far we’ve come. Everyone’s efforts have paid off, and our team is more moti­vat­ed than ever, which is reflect­ed on the pitch. We’re con­fi­dent that this momen­tum will enable us to put in some fine per­for­mances at the Ova­lies in ear­ly May.