On a beautiful sunny Sunday in late May UAL alumni gathered at the massive Century Park in Shanghai for the inaugural London Alumni Sports Picnic organised by the UAL Shanghai Alumni Association for an afternoon of sports, tea, Guinness and Pimm’s. They were joined by alumni from London School of Economics, University College London and King’s College London, with around 70 people in total taking part in the festivities.
After taking shelter from the sun for the first hour in their respective alumni groups, the party really kicked off just after 3pm with the first event of the day, the inter-alumni Running Man competition where teams of 5 attempted to rip tags from the t-shirts of the other team. Despite brave resistance against the 4 boys of UCL, UAL (with 3 girls on the team) were eliminated in the first round. KCL emerged eventual winners after knocking out LSE and beating UCL in the final. A fiercely contested first event left a few participants short of breath and some with battle scars!
Tea was served with cakes, pastries, soft drinks, Guinness and a homemade jug of Pimm’s and lemonade as the assorted alumni started to mingle with each other on the grass or play badminton or volleyball. The organisers were delighted to see the guys and girls exchanging WeChat numbers.
As late afternoon approached the teams were ready for the second inter-university competition – volleyball. The UAL team fought bravely and pushed the strong UCL team close before eventually losing in the first round by a few points. LSE emerged final winners after coming back from 5-0 down in the final game against UCL, who lost both finals!
At 6.30pm 14 people stayed to have dinner together at the nearby Kerry Center, showing that an afternoon of sport really can help build bonds that will surely last beyond the day itself.
A big thank you to Guess Jeans for generously sponsoring a denim tote bag for every attendee and to G-Star RAW for sponsoring the prizes for best team player awarded to one alumni from each of the 4 universities. And a word of recognition for Huiying, who fearlessly captained the UAL team. We look forward to the next inter-alumni event and better luck for Team UAL!