Abundant Varisty Athletics action on the way to Pretoria
Athletics fans can look forward to an abundance of action, when both the Varsity Athletics events of 2018 will be presented in the Tuks Stadium in Pretoria.
Varsity Athletics will return on 2 and 23 March 2018. This year, both events will take place at the newly-renovated Tuks Athletics Stadium in Pretoria. Tuks Athletics Club also celebrate their centenary in 2018.
This year, Varsity Athletics will once again provide the platform to South Africa’s rising stars, as it did for household names such as Akani Simbine, Constant Pretorius, Ruswahl Samaai, LJ van Zyl and Caster Semenya, who will represent South Africa at the Commonwealth Games next month.
Varsity Sports aims to provide athletes the platform to go faster, further and higher, nurturing the next generation of South African athletes.
The event will continue with two divisions: the A division will have eight competing universities, and the B division, will have four competing universities. This format was adopted after the University of Cape Town, Central University of Technology, University of Limpopo, and Vaal University of Technology joined Varsity Athletics.
The A division follows the IAAF format where the top 15 athletes’ points from each university are counted towards the entire team’s scores, and the B division will use the top 10 athletes’ points for each university. These points count towards the universities’ totals. The IAAF points scoring format has been adopted for the meetings.
A winner of both meetings will be announced, as well as the overall winner, who will be crowned on 23 March in Pretoria.
Division A includes University of Pretoria (Tuks); North West University (NWU); Tshwane University of Technology (TUT); University of Free State (Kovsies); Nelson Mandela University (Madibaz); University of Stellenbosch (Maties); University of the Western Cape (UWC) and the University of Johannesburg (UJ).
“Varsity Athletics affords fantastic opportunities to our young athletes to help them prepare for the biggest athletics event in the world such as the SA Championship and Commonwealth Games. It’s an extreme honour to be able to provide these future stars a world-class platform to bring their dreams to life,” said Duitser Bosman, Varsity Sports CEO.
In 2018 Varsity Sports launched a new campaign called #SpeakUp in conjunction with Professor Lizette Rabe. The aim of the campaign is to drive the message that everyone should be aware of their mental wellness and state of mind, and remove the stigma around mental wellness. With the international colour for mental awareness being green, every Varsity Athletics record holder will don a bright green number to create awareness.
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