Zino Arbane has been announced as the new co-host of Bleed Green TV.
Originally from London, Zino will host alongside Harriet Tyler after Edd Keeler stepped down to assume the role of Sports President.
Now going into his third year, Zino chose to study Sports Studies at the University of Stirling. His decision to study in Scotland was helped by the fact that he already had a number of connections.
Zino knew Josh Freeman, a current member of the tennis club, and would be joining with another member he already knew, Alfie Heiberg. Coincidentally, one of his other friends studies at the University of Edinburgh.
Indeed, if it weren’t for his friendship group, Zino wouldn’t even have ended up at Stirling. He explained how he had only submitted an application to Stirling towards the end of August, after his friends suggested he apply as a joke.
Thinking that he wouldn’t get in, it came as a surprise when he was given an unconditional offer the day after being unsuccessful with his first choice university.
“It was a dream of all of ours to mess around and it became a reality.” Zino said with a laugh.
As with his decision to come to university, Josh and Alfie proved to be influential in getting Zino back onto a tennis court after he had fallen out of love with the sport prior to coming to university.
Over the course of his time playing for Stirling, Zino has represented a number of the men’s teams. Playing for the third team in his first year, last year he played primarily for the 5th team, which eventually finished top of Scottish League 3A, ahead of St Andrews.
When asked whether he would continue to play competitively this year, Zino explained that he would be ready to play and support the university teams if needed but was aware that there is a lot of competition for places.
As well as playing tennis competitively, ZIno was elected as one of the club’s social secretaries for his second year, a role which he will continue this academic year. When talking about his responsibilities, he explained that the role was more stressful than he realised, but was fun once the build-up to the individual socials was over.
In addition, the social secretary role will be even more complicated this year due to coronavirus concerns, which will inevitably have a negative impact on any potential socials sports clubs might want to hold.
However, Zino acknowledged how tennis was relatively lucky in comparison to other sports like netball, as it was already a socially distanced sport. Furthermore, it was one of the first to be allowed back by the government once lockdown restrictions started to ease.
With coronavirus inevitably changing the way certain things are done for the foreseeable future, a new co-host won’t be the only thing that’s different about Bleed Green TV this year.
In what seems to be a common theme, Zino was initially persuaded to comment on Harriet Tyler’s Facebook post about the search for a new co-host by some friends as they all sat in the library. This led to Harriet asking him if he would mind doing a screen test which took place a week before lockdown was announced, and Zino subsequently agreeing to be the new co-host of Bleed Green TV.
Despite initially being more remote, this is a very exciting time for Bleed Green TV and we look forward to seeing what they produce as the year progresses.
Feature Image: Bleed Green TV
