A New Year and Team Updates
New Beginnings
Speedcubing in the UK has gone from strength to strength in the UK over the past 10 years, and a huge part of that is thanks to our huge number of organisers that find venues and bring cubing to all parts of the country. However, without the continuous effort of our delegates over the years, we would not have had the growth and number of competitors we do today.
Having said that, the COVID-19 pandemic has put a lot of that on hold and unfortunately we could not hold any competitions in the UK from March 2020 through the entirety of 2021. But that is not to say that the popularity of cubing has waned in any way. Many new cubers have emerged as a result of perhaps boredom from having to stay at home, or maybe you saw The Speed Cubers on Netflix and thought you wanted to give it a go. The registration for Wakefield Open 2022 filled up in only 14 minutes and showed us that cubing is more popular than ever in the UK. To accommodate our plans to have more competitions we have decided to promote four people to Trainee delegate:
Bertie Longden, Christopher Morris, Matthew Prestwich and Nevins Chan Pak Hoong (陈百鸿)
Bertie has been the webmaster for the UK for a few years already, so he is an addition to the delegate squad. Alongside Bertie, Christopher and Nevins are all already WCA Staff members, and so are very familiar with some of the inner workings of cubing competitions and the WCA. All four new trainee delegates are all very experienced organisers too, all of them having organised numerous competitions across the UK already. Welcome to the team!
Departures
However, with the advent of these four as trainees, we are also saying goodbye to three amazing delegates.
David Lim
David moved to London from New Zealand in early 2017 as a new venture, having already been promoted to a delegate prior to his arrival. We brought him onto our crew and he has been a key member of the team since, helping delegate 25 competitions in the UK as well as 4 in Ireland during his time here. During the pandemic, David made the decision to move back to Auckland and so we bid him farewell from the UK scene, however he will still be staying on as a delegate helping organise competitions in New Zealand and we hope he will be able to come back to visit us every once in a while!
Thaynara Santana de Oliveira
Thay first competed in the UK in 2013 after a few competitions in her home country of Brazil, became a delegate in 2016, and delegated 7 competitions in Brazil whilst completing her studies. Thay moved to the UK in early 2019 having already visited the UK many times before then. Aside from the competitions in Brazil, she has delegated 14 competitions in the UK and 1 in Ireland. Whilst Thay is stepping down from her delegate duties, she is still a WCA Executive Assistant for the Board and her work is key to many ongoing projects within the WCA.
Daniel Sheppard
Daniel became a delegate in mid-2011 and founded the UKCA in late 2012 to provide a hub for all things UK cubing. From 2011 until 2014 Daniel was the sole delegate in the UK and worked hard to bring the number of competitions from 2 per year up to 8 per year, and since then we have nearly doubled that again with Daniel at the helm of the UKCA. Daniel has delegated a total of 76 competitions, most of which have happened in the UK including the first competition in Scotland and Northern Ireland, 1 in Belgium, 1 in Brazil, but also importantly 3 in Ireland, two of which were the first two competitions in the country. We can say for certain that without Daniel, cubing in the UK would not be as big as it currently is and we are sad to see him go after a decade of service to the community.
We will still see Daniel and Thaynara at competitions in the UK as they are intending to compete every now and then and also continue to organise some competitions too. But we wish all three the best going forward! With their departure, James Molloy also gets promoted to President of the UKCA as the most senior delegate, and Sam Spendla will assume the role of Vice-President. You can read a little bit about the history of the UKCA as well as the current team on on our About page.
We look forward to seeing you at a UK competition soon, keep an eye out for other future announcements! You can now sign up to our brand new mailing list below to get notified whenever we make a new post on the website too so you never miss out on an update!