The team attended the opening ceremony last night at a sold out Schauinsland−Reisen Arena in Duisburg with fencer Harry Saner as the flagbearer and today took to the field geared up to represent the green and gold proudly. During the first day of competition, USSA competed in three different sporting codes including swimming, tennis and basketball – see how they faired below:

Swimming

With South African Olympic stars like Tatjana Smith (Schoenmaker) and Kaylene Corbett launching their careers at the FISU Games, South African spectators can’t wait to see the results of how our swimmers compete in the pool.

The team shone in the water in the heat stages of the swimming events, securing spots in the semifinals and finals with the following results in the respective categories:

• Men’s 4x100m Freestyle Relay (Pieter Coetzer, Ruard van Renen, Arno Kruger and Guy Brooks) placed 5th in the final with a time of 3:15.70
• Women’s 4x100m Freestyle Relay (Olivia Nel, Georgia Nel, Michaela de Villiers and Hannah Robertson) placed 6th in the final with a time of 3:44.18
• Women’s 200m Backstroke (Hannah Pearse, heat time: 2:11.80, semifinal time: 2:10.45) into the finals tomorrow
• Men’s 400m Freestyle (Cameron Casali, heat time: 3:54.70 − PB) into the semifinals tomorrow

Tennis

On the tennis court, our student−athletes kicked off the singles competition. In the men’s singles section, Jason Fogle took on a home favourite in Germany’s Vasquez. The first set ended 1−6 to the German with Fogle digging deep to get back into the game. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be for Fogle who went down in straight sets to Vasquez. The game ended 6−1, 6−2 with lots of lessons for the next match.

South Africa’s Lilitha Ndungane took on Fakih from USA in the women’s singles section, Ndungane lost the first set 6−2 to the American and put up a hard−fought battle but lost the match 6−2, 6−1 in the end.

South Africa will continue to compete in the singles and doubles section as the competition progresses.

Basketball

South Africa men’s 3x3 basketball team are joined by Lithuania and Poland in Group C, they played both sides on day one. In their opening match of the competition, SA took on a strong Lithuania side and after an intense game the team were narrowly defeated 13−21.

Although the men’s team were gunning for redemption against Poland, the Polish side were on top of their game and handed South Africa their second loss of the day. The game ended 11−21 to Poland. South Africa’s Captain Alan Mamaja had this to say after their games: “The team needs to fix their defence, but I am very proud of the boys in how they showed up in the game”.

There are loads more action to come in an epic showdown in Germany, you can follow Team South Africa’s progress at the FISU WUG on @ussastudent social media platforms or stream it via Fisu.tv.