By Liam Grainge

Varsity got underway last night as the climbing took place at Freeklime. Huddersfield came out victorious and took the first win of the competition, leaving Bradford crumbling under pressure. 

The event consisted of multiple climbing courses set up with different difficulties to test the teams. Throughout the fixture, each member would get multiple tries to get to the top and have to keep a steady grip on the final rock to make the attempt acceptable.  

The evening started with some altercations to the procedure as Bradford had to field a smaller squad than what was required, meaning that scores would be worked out by the top three from each team being put in to find the winner.  

As the event went on, the Strong Huddersfield side went through the course, with many of the team only having to take one chance to scale the courses set up, with Bradford walking in their footprints of the Huddersfield side.  

Huddersfield’s three top scorers came up with an average of 206 points from Arlan Chambers (202 points), Santi Sloan-Backes (208 points) and Tom Pagon (209 points). Although these three were the highest scorers, the team performed to such high standards compared to the opposition, with everyone bringing in around 200 points. There were many outstanding performances, but Megan Walker was the best performer of the evening.  

This first win, along with a win for the archery team, puts Huddersfield 2 nil up against Bradford going into the main event today. It is all to play for, with 11 fixtures to play, to see if Huddersfield can retain the Varsity trophy and complete the three-peat.  

After the event, Arlan spoke about how he felt about his performance. He said, “There’s pressure in competitions to get it finished in the first few goes” he also spoke about the challenges that are faced when climbing at a competition. “You’ve got to try and understand it just by looking at it so I don’t mess it up and fall off.” He found some courses difficult, such as having to show a range of technical adjustments and holds to make sure that he could get up the wall.