Imperial College men’s volleyball captain Alexandros Abadjis was delighted to have capped off his final year at the university with victory in the Trophy final at BUCS BIG Wednesday.
Imperial comfortably beat Northumbria University 3-0 to lift the trophy with Abadjis playing a central role in the victory at Loughborough.
It is not just the Civil Engineering undergrad who is leaving this year and Abadjis was grateful that so many of his teammates have a happy parting gift.
“It’s a good thing to captain the side to the trophy,” said the 21-year-old. “It’s my last year so we hadn’t achieved something similar like this so far. So for us it’s a great success.
“We’ve been together for four years now, that’s the coach included. We’re a family and we enjoy playing together. It’s a good reward for the whole team.
“Many of the players have been here for three or four years. Every year we have more players coming, so that’s how it’s worked for us.
“We’ve built a strong team bond over the years, so it’s helped us to stay together.”
BIG Wednesday is the finale of the BUCS sporting calendar, which sees 100,000 students each year take part in BUCS Wednesday competitions in some 3,500 teams across 600 leagues – making it the biggest student sporting programme in Europe.
Abadjis has competed in the BUCS Big Wednesday once before in his university career and said that despite the one-sided match, he fully enjoyed returning to Loughborough for the Trophy.
“I played at BUCS in my first year and this is the first time I’ve competed in a finals since,” he added.
“It’s great to play on big stages. We had targeted it for a while and thought it was achievable, so we did that. That’s what really matters for us.
“It’s probably fair to say that the final wasn’t that competitive but to get here was the challenge, and then it’s always fun after that.
“We made it and wanted to finish strongly which we managed to do, so the team is really pleased with that. We’ll enjoy this.
“I’m not a very attacking player. I’m here to help the rest to perform and get the trophy home. We managed to do that, and that was always our goal.”
British Universities & Colleges Sport (BUCS) is the governing body for Higher Education sport in the UK, representing 170 institutions and facilitating 52 sport programmes.
BUCS has been shortlisted for Governing Body of the Year at the BT Sports Industry Awards 2015 and is supported by Deloitte www.bucs.org.uk
