Charlotte Evans charges to 200m backstroke title

More than 6,000 student athletes descended on the Steel City this weekend for three action-packed days of university and college sport.

With nine sports being contested, in seven different venues, the event – now in its fifth year – is the largest annual multi-sport event in the country.

Former Aylesbury High School pupil Evans, is in her first year at Loughborough University, training in the same pool as British Olympic champion Adam Peaty.

She put in a time of 2:12.41 to take the victory from University of Edinburgh’s Anna Newlands, with Manchester Met’s Chloe Golding taking bronze.

And Evans could not hide her delight at touching the wall first at Ponds Forge.

“It feels good. I’ve never been a champion before so I’m happy with that,” said the retail, marketing and management student.

“It’s nice to do well for the team. It feels really good because even when I didn’t go to university everyone would still talk about it saying that it’s a really good meet, really good atmosphere, you get all the volunteers and everything.

“It’s really good to get selected from Loughborough and to represent the university.”

And there was more success for Milton Keynes students as former Hazeley School pupil Aaron Adom took bronze over 200m on the track.

The Marshall Milton Keynes athlete scraped onto the podium by just one one-hundredth of a second, setting a season’s best of 21.83 seconds.

The Brunel University student came over the line behind a University of East London double, with Kyle Ennis beating two-time defending champion Omololu Abiodun, but he was thrilled to hold on for a medal.

“I thought I’d lost it,” he admitted. “I’ve been working on my dip so that helped it.

“I’m usually better on the second half so I knew I wanted to get a good start and then come off the bend well. Luckily I was able to catch up with him and out-dip him on the line.

“Being here at BUCS Nationals as part of a team really motivates you.

“I literally could hear them screaming my name on the back straight and it made me push harder, and that’s helped me get a bronze medal.”

PLEASE LEAVE IN FINAL PAR - British Universities & Colleges Sport (BUCS) is the national governing body for Higher Education (HE) sport in the UK, organising leagues and competitions for more than 150 institutions across 52 different sports. BUCS Nationals is the UK’s largest annual multi-sport event, bringing over 6,000 athletes to Sheffield to compete in 9 sports