Who are we? 

Hi, we’re the University of Bristol Korfball Club. You might be wondering what Korfball is. I don’t blame you - the 80s promotional video available on YouTube isn’t doing us many favours.

Nonetheless, it’s a sport that we absolutely love. Originating from Holland, it has become a whole lot more popular in recent years and is only getting bigger. It’s easy to play, very relaxed and is pretty much the only sport that requires a mixed sex team by default. 

Sounds fun, right? Right. However, Korfball isn’t all fun and games - we play seriously and competitively, and we love a good challenge. The thing that distinguishes us from other sports clubs, however, is that we always play with a big ol’ grin across our faces. 

Summary

In a nutshell: 'Promote the diversity that makes Bristol great - help keep a quirky little sports club alive.'

As a club, we’re on the smaller side with a core membership of about 50. What this means is we often struggle to pay for things like travel, tournament entry and a full-time coach. This is a real shame, because as it turns out, we’re actually pretty good at Korfball - we came 4th in the Club Championships last year, fending off teams from all over the country! 

We’re a completely self-run club - everything we’ve achieved so far has been down to the dedication and commitment of our members. This encompasses all aspects of the club - organisation, coaching, admin, training and entry into tournaments to name just a few. So some would say we’ve done pretty well for ourselves so far, and while this is really great, this also means that our club is growing faster than we can afford to keep it running.

But there’s good news - we’re like cactuses when it comes to funding. Cactuses, you say? We can do a lot with very little. Nothing more than a couple of hundred pounds will keep us green and nourished for another year, and even more will help us bloom into the most beautiful fictional plant analogy you've ever seen. 

Any kind of support that you can give is not only going to be hugely appreciated, but it’s going to make a huge difference to us not just as a Club, but as people that love a sport that isn't exactly mainstream! If you can't donate yourself, that's okay - giving this page a share on social media, emailing it to your wealthy uncle or just showing it to your friends will do us a world of good.

Thank you! 

Where will the money go? 

Thrifty as we are, there are some unavoidable costs of running a sports club. Travel is the most expensive of these. Not all of us have cars, mopeds or even rollerblades, so getting from A to B with all of our kit isn’t always as easy as GCSE Maths. Car hire to get to and from tournaments, train tickets and long coach journeys are all part of the package and the these can really mount up. 

We asked a lot of our team members last year and pretty much self-funded our trip to the annual BUCS Tournament. We had trained really hard, but as a relatively small team we didn’t know if we would be able to compete with the bigger clubs with their shiny sound systems and scary German coaches. But we kept our heads up and we were rewarded with 6th place - 6th in the whole country! For a club as small as ours, this was a huge achievement. 

We’d love to be able to go back this year bigger and better, but this lack of funding is making this less and less likely. 

Achieving more than our minimum goal would mean that we could pay for a full-time coach and maybe even subsidize things like membership costs so that we can introduce even more people to our wonderfully obscure sport.

It's awesome that Bristol is the kind of place where sports like ours can have a home, and we'd love to keep it that way. If you can't donate yourself, please give this video a share on social media, post it on your blog or even just show it to the person sitting next to you.

Thank you!