Next week Law & Practice Masters Student Rhema Lord-Mears will be travelling to Taipei, Taiwan where she’ll be competing in the World University Games 2017 representing the University of Huddersfield.

Mears has played football for the majority of her life, initially at Manchester United GCOE, followed by a spell with Manchester City and most recently at Sheffield FC joining in August 2015.

Originally from Oldham, the attacking midfielder attended the trials for the Great Britain representative team at Warwick University with Sheffield FC teammates.

She said: “we knew nothing about it; we didn’t know the scale of how big it was going to be until we got to the trials.”

“When I got the good news that I was in, it was a real shock because I’ve never been involved in anything like this.”

Describing it as an opportunity that she couldn’t miss, Rhema regrets not being able to get involved with the university women’s football club due to her commitments to Manchester City at the time: “I wanted to join in because it’s obviously a university sports club and that’s where you make the best mates.”

Initially visiting a camp in Hong Kong this week to acclimatise them and prepare for the games in Taipei, Rhema and her teammates started preparations in the UK with a 2-0 loss to the England Lionesses u19 side and a 1-1 draw against men’s team St Neots, a semi-professional club from Cambridgeshire.

It’s been an extremely quick process after only attending the trials three weeks ago and then joining up with the GB team at Lilleshall Sports Facility for camp.

Mixing it with the elite of world university sport at what she describes as a ‘mini Olympics’ in Taiwan, she joked that members of the GB camp didn’t know what Huddersfield was when she spoke of who her representative institution.

Everybody at Huddersfield Students’ Union sends their best wishes to Rhema as she flies to Hong Kong tomorrow.

If you’re interested in joining a sports club at the university, email myself at su.activites@hud.ac.uk for more information on how to get involved!

Best of luck, Rhema!

Jake Rodgers

Activities Officer