For many years university students have used Concept2 rowing machines as part of keep fit regimes in gyms across the country, while the annual British Indoor Rowing Championship held in the National Indoor Arena at Birmingham has provided an outlet for the competitive streak of over 600 students each year.

With the launch of the BUSA British Universities Championships, the new multi-sports national finals weekend for university sport, indoor rowing has been invited as an individual sport to offer a BUSA Universities League programme with the SUPER8s BUSA Finals being part of the celebrations in Sheffield during March.

SUPER8s is based on a format of University teams of eight for both men and women and will run both online and face-to-face, offering all students an opportunity to take part in healthy exercise and in an attainable level of competition. Unlike some sports, there is no barrier to entry in terms of equipment or experience, instead just a unique opportunity to perform competitively in a supportive environment on readily accessible equipment.

The idea of SUPER8s is to challenge all students to move beyond current perceptions of indoor rowing as a warm-up or for on-water rowers only and to offer them an opportunity to compete both against their own personal targets and within a team for their university at a national event. SUPER8s is a full part of the BUSA programme, receiving the same BUSA points as other BUSA sports leagues, so attracts Sports Union support as well.

“The opportunity to widen participation with the added edge of open competition is clearly important for our student community and should encourage many currently outside our competition structure to get involved in simple, healthy activity” said BUSA Director Nige Mayglothling. “We are delighted to be working with Concept2 to support and encourage our healthy-campus and healthy-competition principles and to offer our more competitive students an opportunity to represent their universities at our National Finals”

SUPER8s will run over six rounds, three online rounds and three head to heads, with the final rounds being held in Sheffield in March for the top 16 teams. Full details can be found on http://www.therowingcompany.com/universities