Every Tuesday during the spring semester of my junior year at Trinity University, I attended my Sport in England class with 18 other students that was taught by four professors. We spent months comparing and contrasting American and British sport, touching on everything from video assistant referees (VAR) and parachute payments, to racism in football.
As fun as each class was, every week felt like a countdown to the main event. After our initial trip to London in December got postponed, the class was rescheduled to fly across the pond in May to explore all we had learned in the classroom. There was constant fear that something would again get in the way, but the calendar quickly turned to May, seniors crossed the Laurie Auditorium stage and Sport in England took off (mostly) from San Antonio toward the United Kingdom.
For two weeks, we immersed ourselves in the world of British sport. We watched two football finals in Wembley Stadium, a test match at Lord’s Cricket Ground and even took a train to Manchester to tour Old Trafford. We saw Wimbledon receive final touchups ahead of next month’s championships, visited Twickenham Rugby Stadium in the aftermath of a world tournament and played football at the home of Queens Park Rangers. The delay until May also let us take in the historic Platinum Jubilee to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II spending 70 years on the throne.
Each tour and each experience gave us unique insight into similarities and differences between American and British sport because we not only learned about it from textbooks but actually lived it out in the world. This class provided once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, it taught each of us so much, and it allowed us to form lifelong relationships.
In an effort to process all that we learned and saw now that I’m back in San Antonio, I will be writing about each venue we visited. Be sure to follow along and join the remarkable tube ride that was Sport in England 2022. First stop: Wembley Stadium!
