Chris Noel attended his first training session at SUBC, under pressure from a fellow economics student Colin Allsop, in early 1968. Since then Chris has been pretty much continually involved with SUBC as competitor, secretary, Captain, President and Vice President. After becoming President in 1987 and dealing with the the Sports Union to have the boatshed repaired and re-opened Chris became concerned about the administration of the Sports Union and ran for Vice President in 1990.
Fortunately the election of Chris as a Vice President and Bruce Ross as President signalled changes at what is now SU Sport and a more professional administration was installed under the guidance of CEO Greg Harris. The progress of SU Sport in the past fifteen years has been remarkable and while this has been led primarily by Greg Harris and Bruce Ross, Chris says he is proud that he considers he was in part catalyst for these overdue changes.
Chris has continued to serve on the SU Sport Board as a represenatative of the University senate and with the support of SU Sport and assistance of a number of outstanding coaches ( Hans Madritsch, Simon Pennington, Joe Rodrigues, Mary Rabjohns, Andrew Randell, Rhett Ayliffe, Phil Bourguignon and Alan Bennet) and alumni has built SUBC into the leading high performance centre for rowing in New South Wales.
Chris receieved his fellowship in 11th May 2007 at a degree ceremony for his old faculty, Economics, held in the Great Hall. His fellowship citation reflected on nearly forty years of involvement with SUBC and twenty years involvement with SU Sport.