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The UWA Western Waagyls were winners at the recent National Indigenous Tertiary Education Student Games ( NITESG ).

Indigenous students and staff from UWA won 22 out of a possible 24 games during the week.

The 10 students and two staff from the School of Indigenous Studies competed in were mixed basketball, mixed futsal (indoor soccer), mixed netball and mixed touch footy.

In the basketball grand final, UWA came up against one of the two host University  of Western Sydney (UWS) teams. Behind at half time by five points, UWA broke away in the second half with some awesome skills displayed by the girls to power home by 15 points.

The team was hoping to "just do well" in futsal. But they made it to the grand final against the other UWS team but lost that one  (finding out afterwards that they had been up against a national representative in the opposing team).

SIS has always performed well in netball and this year was no exception. For the third time in three days the team reached the grand final and were again up against one of the UWS teams. A consistent performance across all positions saw the team come up trumps to win by 10 goals!

Touch footy was played in blustery 40-50km/h winds on the fourth and final day of the games. Again the team was hoping to "do ok". But UWA have surprised all east coast teams (and perhaps themselves a little) by reaching the grand final making it four out of four, this time against hot favourites James Cook University.

Unfortunately the team did get beaten but certainly put up a good fight under the conditions and considering they were the only team to have played in every qualifying and final round throughout the week.

So the UWA Western Waagyls won 22 out of a possible 24 games for the week and was the only team to feature in every grand final resulting in two gold medals and two silver medals and the overall championship.

UWA now has the option to host the NITESG next year.

The team thanks all their sponsors especially the Vice-Chancellor, Wesfarmers, Aboriginal Health, WASAC, UWA Student Guild, City of Subiaco, UWA Sport and Recreation, SIS and Armando Sports.