Journalism students at University of Northampton (UON) were in their ‘reporting and sporting’ element last week, covering the annual Varsity.
Varsity is when sports teams at different universities battle it out for a much-coveted trophy, with another, in UON’s case, the University of Bedfordshire.
Organised by the Northampton Students’ Union (SU), this multi-sport competition is a highlight of the student and SU calendar. The sports represented were archery, badminton, basketball, cheerleading, futsal (a five-a-side indoor football game), football and netball.
UON took the prize this year, the final points total being 6 – 4.
Sienna Mahoney (Multimedia Journalism), originally from North London and Beth Owen (Multimedia Sports Journalism), who hails from Bristol, were part of UON’s media team.
Aside from court/pitch-side commentary and live blogging, the students also flexed their radio ‘muscles’ thanks to UON partner NLive Radio which gave them space in their programming for their own evening show about the day’s highlights.
Beth (pictured on the left) talks about her part in Varsity 2026: “It is true what they say that your second year gets harder. You really must step up your game, so Varsity was something I was keen to take part in. This was a big turning point for us, working as a group, and I feel our hard work is reflected in what we’ve produced. I’d like to thank our lecturers for giving us this invaluable opportunity.”
Sienna adds: “One of the Varsity high points was working on the live blog and social media feeds; it was interesting seeing how you need to work quickly from the event to the outputs. We did a lot of preparation leading up to it, who was going to go where, lots of timetabling, creating graphics, we did everything a standard media crew would handle and produce.”
You can listen back to the team’s Varsity show and see their live coverage blog on the NLive Radio website.