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12 July 2019 | Story Ruan Bruwer | Photo Varsity Sport
Antonet Louw
Antonet Louw, star hockey player, was the leading goal scorer at the University Sport South Africa championship in Stellenbosch. She achieved the same milestone in the Varsity hockey competition in May.

Improvement by the Shimlas, men’s hockey, volleyball (men and women), and basketball teams (men and women), and stumbling over the final two hurdles by the netball and women’s hockey teams.

This, in a nutshell, was the Kovsie story at this year’s University Sport South Africa (USSA) championships that took place across the country in the first week of July.

The Shimlas improved from fourth to third place in 2019, winning two of their three encounters. The hockey men, who finished second in last year’s B Section, were unbeaten in 2019, earning them an automatic promotion to the A Section in 2020.

The men’s volleyball team improved from 11th to 6th place, the women from 15th to 5th, and the basketball men (6th) and women (9th) improved by three and one positions respectively.

For a large part of the netball and women’s hockey tournaments, it looked very promising that one or both of the UFS teams could go all the way.

The netball team has won all five of their group matches, including victories over the North-West University (NWU) and Tuks, against whom they lost in the play-off fixtures on the final two days.

Another milestone by Antonet
This was also the case with the women’s hockey team. They recorded wins in all three of their group matches, including a 3-0 win over the Maties, who were the Varsity hockey runners-up in May. In the semi-final, Tuks prevailed by 4-0 and in the play-off for third/fourth place, the Maties triumphed by 3-1.

Antonet Louw, the leading goal scorer during the Varsity hockey tournament, again contributed the most goals (five in five matches).

In the fencing championship, Relebohile Pule (women’s epee) and Johanco Viljoen (men’s sabre) both returned with bronze medals.

Ewald van Zyl (elite male kumite +84 kg, gold medal) and Diena Benade (elite female kumite -68 kg, gold) were the two standouts in karate.

News Archive

Final lecture in Darwin series presented at the UFS
2010-02-23

At the lecture were, from the left: Prof. Terence McCarthy, Prof. Jo van As, Chairperson of the Darwin 200 Committee and Head of the Department of Zoology and Entomology at the UFS, Prof. Bruce Rubidge, Elsabe Brits, journalist at Die Burger and Esther van der Westhuizen, presenter on Groen.
Photo: Leonie Bolleurs


The University of the Free State (UFS), in collaboration with the Central University of Technology, Free State (CUT) and The National Museum in Bloemfontein recently hosted the final lecture on the Charles Darwin lecture series entitled “The story of life and survival”.

The lecture was presented by Prof. Bruce Rubidge, the Director of the Bernard Price Institute for Paleontological Research at Wits University and Prof. Terence McCarthy, a Professor of Mineral Geochemistry at Wits and Head of the Department of Geology. Proff. Rubidge and McCarthy are co-authors of the book The Story of Life on Earth.

Their lecture with the topic “Trends in evolution and their bearing on the future of humankind” dealt with the future of evolution. According to Prof. Rubidge, ninety-nine percent of the species that have ever lived are extinct. “We are living in a time of mass extinction. Fifty thousand species become extinct annually,” he said.

Prof. McCarthy discussed many factors that can result in mankind’s extinction today. The impact of climate change, big volcanic eruptions, a comet or asteroid hitting earth, tsunamis and the collapsing of sea islands are some of the factors Prof. McCarthy believes could cause great catastrophe’s on earth.

“We live on the brink of this all the time,” he said.

Prof. McCarthy also believes that we can avoid these catastrophes. By allowing only one child per family we can shrink the global population with 30% per generation. This is doable in a short time span,” he said.

Other ideas he had on saving mankind from getting extinct is to create extensive ecological reserves on land but especially in the ocean, to decentralise everything, to change to renewable energy, to recycle resources and to be vigilant in doing this.

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