GIAGs: A First Year’s Opinion

by ALEX BOWLEY & illustrated by CHARLIE TO

Wakeboarding, lacrosse, squash. When attending the sports fair, I saw so many sports that I was intrigued by but didn’t see myself signed up for a whole year of. This is where the Give It A Go (GIAG) comes in.

GIAGs are one-off sessions where anybody can come and attempt a sport (or any society). They require no previous experience in the activity and are a place where you can meet other people who are interested in trying out the sport.

So why are the GIAGs so successful in getting people to join? First, it gives the students a chance to experience a sport that would have been previously inaccessible to them. Either because they simply didn’t know the sport existed, or because of the fear of embarrassing themselves in front of fellow students who have been playing since before they could walk.

Wakeboarding has been on my bucket list for a long time. So when the opportunity to give it a go appeared I took it without a second thought. What an experience it was, thrilling and exhilarating. Without the GIAG I wouldn’t have been able to try out this sport which would have required lots of planning and research had I wanted to do it in my own free time.

Squash and lacrosse are both sports that I’ve seen played, normally in highlights on social media, but ones I thought I would be out of my depth in. So, I decided that the GIAGs would be my chance to try them out without any pressure of performing well. I was introduced to the sports and taught some of the basic skills without it feeling like I was being seen as an inconvenience.

My advice for anyone in the first few weeks of the year would be to attend as many GIAGs as you can. My first weeks were filled with them, I probably spent more time playing sports than I did in seminars. These events do not only allow you to try sports that you have never tried before but come with no added pressure as you are trying them out with people who also have little to no experience in the activity.

Meeting people when you are at your most vulnerable, after falling flat on your face wakeboarding, is just an added benefit of the GIAGs. It allows you to meet people who have similar interests and who are outside of your course or accommodation.

Put yourself out there, step out of your comfort zone, and give it a go.

I heard about Katherine from one of her rugby teammates, our beloved Executive Editor Aarti. Katherine plays rugby, she plays water polo, she plays tennis, she surfs, she boxes, she knows taekwondo, she has swam competitively from age 13 to 18, and she’s one of the winners of the iconic annual LSE Fight Night. How could anyone not be in awe of her? If some people remain to be convinced, just watch the video of her sensational boxing match at Fight Night – nothing more needs to be said.

Katherine grew up in a supportive environment where the sports culture was really big. She went to the Canadian International School of Hong Kong where she tried different sports. “Initially, I didn’t really know what my sport was. But over time, I really got into swimming - and competitive swimming - to a level where my coach was a former Olympian and my swim mates were national swimmers.”

Katherine started swimming when she was five, and then competitively from 13 to 18. Once she entered university, she ended up joining the water polo and rugby teams. “I eventually got into boxing because of Fight Night. But the first time I ever boxed was in a summer camp when I was 12. It felt so empowering at such a young age. But when I got back home, we didn’t have boxing really available. So, I did taekwondo for four year and got to red belt.” This was Katherine’s introduction to martial arts.

She started boxing seriously in January 2022, only three months prior to Fight Night. She’d heard about Fight Night and just found it to be really cool. She felt a bit late to the game but turned up to training consistently. “I was not expecting to fight, because I was on the reserve team.” Several weeks into training, Coach Lewis, the LSESU Boxing Team coach, saw potential in Katherine and asked her to fight. “At the moment, I wasn’t thinking: oh, I’m a month behind and I’ve only got two and a half months to prepare, which is really little. All I was thinking was: this is so exciting.”

As Fight Night approached, training got serious. The boxing team would meet three times a week to spar. “Those are quite intense and require a lot of physical fitness and also are quite mentally challenging. Just to be comfortable being hit in the head and come back up to it in a positive way.” On top of additional fitness training twice a week, Katherine also trained on her own. She ended up training almost every day, “One time I went up to six hours a day, which is pushing it a bit.”

When she started, Katherine admitted she did not feel mentally ready to fight. “That took a while for me to get over. I was also quite skinny… I was quite intimidated by everyone else, but [that was] also a reason why I wanted to learn from everyone.” She emphasised that Coach Lewis was really supportive from the get go. “He really made mental health less of a difficult topic to talk about. Because he was so kind and open.” Katherine also asked for feedback from the Boxing Society President and Vice President, Phil Saunes and Abu Miah. She felt very grateful that they were there for every step of the way. Katherine always felt very safe while training with the LSE boxing team. “Everyone is super kind to each other. And I was the one I’d say pushing myself, but no one else was pushing me to an extent where I felt uncomfortable.”

When training by herself, she started visualising fights a lot, and shadow boxing anytime and anywhere. “I remember once I just went into the corridors in the library, hid myself in the bookshelves and then just started shadowboxing.”

Katherine was motivated by her friends’ constant support and her own determination to feel more confident. She felt scared of being in front of everyone during Fight Night and was going through family problems at the time. “I kind of used boxing as an outlet to really prove to myself that I’m worth it… I’m still good enough… I’ll show it to everyone.”

28 March 2022: Fight Night. Katherine, representing the Water Polo Society, fought against a third year who was representing the Boxing Society. “It was quite unexpected how it turned out.”

Before the fight, Katherine was laser-focused. She had her AirPods in and was writing in her affirmation journal, visualising herself winning the fight and throwing the punches she’d practised. Her fight was one of the last fights of the night. “By the time I was getting out to the ring, that was when I felt that sensational atmosphere.” Katherine kept her entrance very quiet, without any crazy dance steps, as she tried to hold on to her focus. She took everything in: the 1000 people watching, the shouts of excitement and then went in. “As soon as the bell went, that’s when I let everything out and went for it.”

After that, everything happened really fast. “I don’t remember. I can only look at the videos that all my friends took... I felt more like a machine just regurgitating everything that I put in training.” Katherine remembered coming out of the ring and that “All my friends were going nuts. They were giving me flowers, hugs and kisses. And that was what I remember. It’s that moment. I knew that all the hard work and all the times that we didn’t go out, all was worth it.”

Winning the fight had lasting effects. “I never really thought that my boxing would have such a big impact. But it turns out a lot of people are coming to me to learn how to box and it’s been a really good experience so far. I often try to turn out to training sessions and just help out with everyone.”

Months after the fight, people still know her as the Fight Night Girl. “I don’t think I’m qualified to take on that name. Every single person out there was just phenomenal. And I get it. Boxing is an individual performance sport. And I’m so beyond lucky to be in this position to be inspiring girls and guys to be boxing but my performance is completely relying on my teammates and my coach because that’s who I trained with.”

The list of sports that Katherine practices seems never ending. I asked her if one had her heart more than the others. “Right now, I’d say definitely, definitely boxing because it really empowers you. And it makes you feel strong and able to defend yourself. As a girl, I’d say that’s something none other sports have made me feel.”

Katherine believes that sport has really humbled her as a person. “There’s always, always, always something that you can work on, learn from someone else, and you’re never ever, ever the best. You could be [the best], it can be temporary. But you should always be on to the next thing.” She explained, “The outcome is some combination of luck, a combination of your fitness, your commitment, but there’s so many factors that come into it, sometimes you win by split second”. She concluded that it really taught her that failure is part of sports just as it is part of life.

Katherine is an advocate for mental health, and she especially wants to raise awareness toward its importance in sports. She explained that “One aspect of being an athlete is loneliness, because you’re being put into a rigid training schedule. And it’s kind of hard to talk to ‘normal’ students and make friends in that way. But I am so thankful that LSE people are so open and just so friendly and genuine in that way that I didn’t feel so much loneliness.” Many athletes are affected by eating disorders, regardless of their gender. Athletes are expected “to look in a certain way–to look jacked or skinny or whatever. And it really puts a toll on you.”

Katherine’s advocacy for mental health led her to work with Pomet, a social media start-up founded earlier this year by LSE, Imperial, and Cambridge students. It’s an online platform where all students from London universities can anonymously chat about shared interests. She added that it has been an interesting role to be in a start-up and see everyone working so hard as a team towards building an app that will impact students’ lives.

As we reached the end of our interview, I asked Katherine if she had anything specific to add. I believe that what she ended up saying concludes this interview quite well. “I really want to inspire people to try new things and just go for it. It doesn’t matter, the outcome, the journey is what matters: make the most out of it, you only live once, take a risk, you never know what will happen.”