| British Universities & Colleges Sport BUCS |
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| Sport | University Sport in the United Kingdom |
| Formation date | 2008 |
| Location | 20–24 King's Bench Street London SE1 0QX United Kingdom |
| President | John Inverdale |
| Chairman | Ed Smith |
| Chief Exec | Karen Rothery |
| Replaced |
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| Official website | |
| www.bucs.org.uk | |
British Universities & Colleges Sport (BUCS) is the governing body for university sport in the United Kingdom. BUCS was formed in June 2008 following a merger of the British Universities Sports Association (BUSA) and University College Sport (UCS) organisations.[1] BUCS is responsible for organising 50 inter-university sports within the UK and representative teams for the World University Championships and the World University Games.
BUCS is a membership organisation for 157 universities and colleges in the UK. It coordinates competitions and leagues for the 2.3 million students attending university. In the 2009/10 season over 4000 teams will compete in 16 league sports. University sports clubs can affiliate to BUCS through their Athletic Union or students' union when no separate AU exists. BUCS has the biggest sporting programme in Europe.
BUCS organises a national championships event called the BUCS Championships. This is hosted by Sheffield until March 2010. In 2009 over 5,500 student athletes competed in 24 sports over five days across 14 venues.[2]
BUSA, one of BUCS's predecessor organisations, was founded in 1994, one of its co-founders was Alun Evans.
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BUCS currently has various sponsors across the organisation; Kukri Sports is the Official Teamwear Supplier to BUCS. PricewaterhouseCoopers has sponsored BUCS since 1999. PricewaterhouseCoopers are title sponsors to the Hockey and Rowing BUCS programmes.[3] BUCS also has other sponsorship deals with Mars, Red Bull, Barefoot Wine, Xtep, Life Fitness, Student City and Molten Sport.
BUCS awards points in all its competitions towards the 'BUCS Overall Championship' - a ranking of member universities' sporting achievements. In recent years the top three positions have been Loughborough, Bath and Birmingham, with the rest of the top 10 generally constituting other "red-brick" universities and institutes with strong sports departments.
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BUCS is the latest manifestation of an association for the promotion of inter-university sport. Competition between various universities had existed for many decades before the twentieth century, notably the rivalries between Oxford and Cambridge, and those between the country's medical schools. However no association existed to oversee or promote more widespread inter-university competition. In February 1918, the Presidents of University Unions conference in Manchester called for the need to establish such an association and the following year the Inter-Varsity Board of England and Wales helds its first inter-varsity meeting, with representatives of nine universities present. In 1922, association football, field hockey, rugby union and swimming were added to the events programme and the following year the Women’s Inter-Varsity Board came into being. In 1930 the Universities Athletic Union (UAU) was established and managed inter-university competition. To manage Britain’s student representation at an international level, the Inter-Varsity Athletic Board was formed in 1953.[12] This was replaced in 1962 by the British Universities Sports Federation (BUSF) with the Scottish Universities Sports Federation, the University of Wales Athletic Union and the Northern Ireland Universities Sports Committee being corporate members. However, colleges and polytechnics were excluded from membership and had their own equivalent bodies, the British Colleges Sports Association and the British Polytechnic Sports Association. Until 1979 men’s and women’s sport were still represented in England and Wales by separate bodies. The Women’s Inter-Varsity Board was then merged into the Universities Athletic Union. In 1992, the divide between universities and polytechnics was removed and a new single organisation was called for to represent them jointly. This led to the UAU and BUSF merging to create British Universities Sports Association (BUSA).[12]
Meanwhile, there had been a development of the representation for staff responsible for sport at university. Thus, in 1960 the Universities Physical Education Association (UPEA) had been formed which in 1972 became the British Universities Physical Education Association. This in turn merged with the Association of Polytechnic Physical Education Lecturers to become British Universities and Colleges Physical Education Association and in 2000 this was renamed as University and College Sport (UCS).[12]
In June 2008 British Universities & Colleges Sport (BUCS) was incorporated as a merger of UCS and BUSA to create one national association for university sport.[12]