I don’t usually like sharing my achievements, really. But, a little while back, I felt more excited about an achievement than I ever have before.
We won a National Student Television Award. A gold, in sport. Someone looked at Forge TV’s 2025 coverage of Sheffield Varsity, and decided it was the best student sport production in the country across that year.
For the opener, Canon Medical Arena day, I was just a commentator from the TV side, and the rest of my roles were to organise our volunteers. There were plenty of technical problems that day, and I was absolutely gutted. And having no exeperience in the technical side of it, really, I couldn’t do anything about it.
I decided, that same day, I’d learn as much as I could about the technical set-up across the next two weeks as I possibly could, so that I’d never be in the position of not being able to help again.
Fast-forward two weeks exactly, and I’d just organised, set-up, commentated on, and led the stream of one of the biggest student sporting events in the country – at two days’ notice – which went almost perfectly, an incredible turn-around.
I had to organise how to get our equipment to the Sheffield Arena, I had to teach myself how to setup a livestream, I had to assign roles to people, I had to teach people how to do these roles, I had to create broadcast graphics, I had to work out how to have cameras working from all around one of the largest arenas in the country, I had to be a leader – all while preparing for a commentary gig for a broadcast that would be watched by thousands – most terrifying perhaps was the fact that it would be blaring out in two of the most popular student bars in the city. And I did it.
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At the time, I wondered if I was being too kind to myself. I wondered if, after weeks of hard work and very little sleep, I was telling myself that it had gone well because I needed it to all be worth it. My friends and family were never going to say to me, knowing how much it had meant to me, “actually, yeah, it wasn’t great”.
I’ve always felt that awards aren’t what it’s all about, but there are people out there, unbiased, that don’t know us, that looked at what we did and thought it was brilliant. And that was special.
Even more special is the fact that it’s down to working with people that mean the world to me. Dan Boland and Chloe Scofield gave me such a love for it that I was never going to give up, and they were the ones that knew what they were doing, and very kindly allowed me to be a huge part of it. I wouldn’t have had a clue without them.
Zain Durrani, Seb Jones and Amy Hamerslagh created, and tended to, a Radio set-up that was so good, I could spend time on the TV side despite my Radio duties, and this is down to them too.
And all of those three, as well as countless others across Forge, committee members and volunteers, helped to made it what it was: a success, in the end. Perhaps my greatest skill that night was delegation, as everyone did brilliantly.
Perhaps the craziest thing for me was that, just two years earlier, I’d been offered the chance to be one of the pundits – a wide-eyed first year, surrounded by third years, that couldn’t imagine the skill that everyone behind-the-scenes had. And there I was, in that exact position I’d never believed I could be in.
I’m not good at being proud of my achievements, and even worse at sharing them, so apologies if, here, I’ve laid it on a bit thick. But this one felt worth it. Thanks for reading.
Thank you
Zain Durrani
Dan Boland
Chloe Scofield
Seb Jones
Amy Hamerslagh
Lloyd Paterson
Max Morris
Arkoduy Dutta
Alex Simpson
Lilly Llewellyn
Dylan Pick
Felix Randle
Oscar Overton
Harsh Srivastava
Dan Williams
Michael Scarborough
All of our over 100 volunteers
Countless more fantastic people at Forge
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