A SPORTING CHANCE
Active recruitment for university sport has been halted by COVID-19, but UWC has found opportunities amid the crisis By Lyndon Julius | Photography: Lyndon Julius & Sikhulule Nkomphela
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len Bentley, a support services manager at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) since 2018, expresses great excitement about the quality of the playing surface that will soon be available to all UWC athletes. Bentley, who also manages the facilities at UWC Sport Stadium, has been in awe of the endurance and perseverance of both UWC athletes and coaches during the pandemic, but says there is a lot of work that will need to be done given the fact that schools and clubs – which remain the core recruitment hubs for universities – have been closed for sporting activities for months on end. “The most important thing to consider is the fact that clubs and schools provide an excellent feeder system for athletes who wish to further their studies at UWC,” Bentley says. “This break in activity will be felt both in the short and long run, the former since there hasn’t been any sport played for about a full year and we are currently in the middle of what would have been the athletics season. The long-term effect will see the quality of events such as athletic meets, cross-country and intervarsity competitions be severely affected. “Athletes will now have to recondition their bodies in order to push themselves to compete. I guess the silver lining is that all
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