Sports
Most sports are played competitively and a number of hours are set aside for them daily. Rugby is the major sport of the Michaelmas (Autumn) Term. The 1st XV team and their pitch is known as 'Bigside' while the first years' sports teams are known as 'Midgets'. The school fields 21 rugby teams on most Saturdays of the Michaelmas term. Radley is widely recognised for its rowing reputation. In the Lent (Spring) term hockey and football are the main sports, alongside fives, for those not choosing to row, with cricket, tennis and athletics all popular in the Summer term. Some recent Old Radleians have progressed to play cricket for England or captain county level cricket teams. The cricket grounds have been described as 'one of the best in the country' while the sporting facilities have been described as world class.
Recently in rowing, Radley has competed at Henley Royal Regatta, having reached the semi-final of the Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup twice in the last two years, reaching the final in 2012 and winning it in 1998. The boathouse is located on a stretch of the river Isis about one mile (1.6 km) away from the main college campus.
Sports such as fives, rackets, sailing, badminton and polo are all represented. A real tennis court opened in July 2008, which made Radley College the only school in the world to have fives, squash, badminton, tennis, racquets and real tennis courts all on campus.
Despite such strong competition in so many sports, Rugby (Union) remains the most popular, and most competitive sport for boys at Radley.
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Famous quotes containing the word sports:
“Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behaviour, attire, grace, learning and all their words aimeth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)
“...I didn’t come to this with any particular cachet. I was just a person who grew up in the United States. And when I looked around at the people who were sportscasters, I thought they were just people who grew up in the United States, too. So I thought, Why can’t a woman do it? I just assumed everyone else would think it was a swell idea.”
—Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 85 (June 17, 1991)