From Grand-Slam Champions to Fourth Place: CityU's Ups and Downs Across Two USFHK Seasons

On 12 April 2026, when the University Sports Federation of Hong Kong (USFHK) issued the official overall standings for men's basketball, the row for City University of Hong Kong read "fourth place". Yet in the same federation's archives, CityU appears nine times as the winner of the overall Grand Slam, the combined championship across all men's and women's sports. Nearly a decade separates the two scorecards, but they describe the same athletic programme.

The short version: CityU's men's basketball team finished fourth in the official USFHK 2025-26 standings (as published on 12 April 2026); the men's volleyball team also placed fourth in the same season. But in swimming, CityU ranked second overall in total team points, and both men's and women's football finished in the top three. Over the past two seasons, CityU's record has moved in different directions by sport — it is not a story of uniform decline.

USFHK is Hong Kong's oldest inter-tertiary sports organisation, founded in 1961^※, and now counts 13 tertiary institutions as members. It runs separate inter-collegiate championships for each sport every year. CityU was once a dominant force in this system: as our article on <sports teams, inter-tertiary competitions and the rebuilding of sports facilities> details, CityU has won the USFHK overall Grand Slam nine times, most recently in the 2016-17 season. That piece explained where the glory came from; this one answers a different question — a decade on, where exactly does CityU stand in each individual sport?

# Is CityU still an "athletic powerhouse" in the USFHK?

The answer depends on the sport. Using the official Overall Results PDFs published on each event page of the USFHK website as the sole data source, this article cross-checked the official final placings across nine categories in six sports — basketball, football, volleyball, taekwondo, athletics (track and field) and swimming — for the 2025-26 season, with media match reports from 2024-25 added for comparison where relevant. The result is not a single downward line: basketball and volleyball have both weakened, with the men's teams in each sport finishing fourth; football remains solid in the top three, the men runners-up and the women third; swimming has been the most consistent performer of the past two seasons, with total team points second only to CUHK. Here is a quick-reference table of the official placings across the nine categories:

# Why did CityU's men's basketball slip from champions to official fourth place?

To grasp what "fourth place" means here, you need to see the path CityU's men's basketball team has travelled over the past three seasons. In 2023-24, CityU beat Baptist University 79:63^※ to reclaim the inter-collegiate title — a verified result already recorded in our article on <sports teams, inter-tertiary competitions and the rebuilding of sports facilities>. Wearing that crown, CityU entered the 2024-25 semi-finals as defending champions, facing the University of Hong Kong. According to on.cc's sports coverage, HKU edged past the defending champions CityU 77:74 on the strength of the "La Salle duo" — Tsang Long-him and Chak Chun-tak contributed 31 and 22 points respectively^※, ending CityU's run at the semi-final stage. HKU went on to win that final 73:68 against Lingnan University, who had reached the championship match for the first time; Lingnan's official magazine Lingnan Touch described it as^※ "the best result in the history of the Lingnan University Men's Basketball Team".

In 2025-26, the official USFHK overall results sheet marked CityU's men's basketball team down as fourth (4th) — champions CUHK, runners-up HKU, third PolyU, in a list signed by committee member Luk Ka Ying on 12 April 2026^※. That season's final was itself a thriller: as Slam Dunk HK reported, CUHK came from behind to beat HKU 74:72 in the final, ending a 33-year men's title drought dating back to the 1992-93 season^※. CityU player Popov Kristiyan Stoyanov won the men's individual rebounding award that season, but the same report nowhere mentions CityU reaching the semi-finals or taking part in the final — individual honours remain, while the team result has slipped to fourth.

Read across three seasons — 2023-24 champions → 2024-25 semi-final exit to HKU (74:77) → 2025-26 official fourth place — CityU's men's basketball has not collapsed in a single rout; every loss came by one to three points. But the trajectory is clearly downward.

# Why did the women's basketball "fourth place" become "third"?

The women's side is a more convoluted story, involving an eligibility dispute that was settled three months late. On 11 April 2026, the USFHK women's basketball final ended with Baptist University beating the Chinese University of Hong Kong 70:59. As Sportsroad reported (reproduced by the Hong Kong Elite Athletes Association), 「大專女子籃球賽2025-26總決賽於4月11日結束，當時香港浸會大學以70：59擊敗香港中文大學」^※ — the final was played on 11 April, with HKBU defeating CUHK 70:59. But the same report records that on 3 July 2026, nearly three months later, the USFHK website announced that HKBU had been stripped of the season's results for fielding an ineligible player, and barred from the 2026-27 competition; CUHK was awarded the championship instead.

That eligibility ruling directly reshuffled CityU's official placing. The reissued USFHK women's basketball results sheet lists only seven institutions — HKBU removed — in the order: champions CUHK, runners-up PolyU, third CityU, fourth EdUHK, 「季軍 3rd 香港城市大學 CityUHK」^※. Comparing this seven-institution list with the eight-team men's basketball table for the same season, it can be inferred that CityU's original placing was fourth, and that with HKBU eliminated and every subsequent team moved up one position, CityU rose from fourth to third. This inference is not stated verbatim in any USFHK document; it is the result of cross-checking the two public records and is flagged here as "inferred". Under either version, CityU's women's basketball team did not reach the final in 2025-26.

For comparison, the previous season: the 2024-25 women's basketball final saw PolyU beat HKU 88:78. On.cc reported that PolyU had accomplished a "seven-peat"^※; in the semi-finals PolyU beat CUHK 59:53 and HKU beat HKBU 63:58. That detailed match report nowhere mentions CityU's placing or results, and this article records that as "not found" rather than speculating.

# Why do both men's and women's football keep losing to PolyU?

Even as basketball has declined, both football teams have held the top three for two straight seasons. Their ceiling, in both cases, is the same team — PolyU.

In men's football, the official USFHK final standings for 2025-26 show 「第一名 1st 香港理工大學 PolyU / 第二名 2nd 香港城市大學 CityUHK」^※, with CityU runners-up. This is the second consecutive year CityU has lost the final to PolyU: in the 2024-25 decider, according to the official USFHK release (distributed via Media OutReach), PolyU beat CityU 2:1, "regaining the championship they had lost years earlier"^※ — CityU had led at one point in the group stage and at half-time, but were ultimately overturned, with PolyU holding on despite two players being booked in stoppage time.

The women's story is similar, only the scoreline is starker. In 2025-26 CityU officially placed third, 「3rd 第三名 CityUHK 香港城市大學」^※, behind champions CUHK and runners-up PolyU. In the 2024-25 final, meanwhile, PolyU beat CityU by a resounding 7:1^※. The report quoted PolyU's camp saying "CityU seems like a curse to us" — because in the final two seasons earlier (2023-24), it was PolyU who finished runners-up, losing to CityU. Across three seasons, CityU's women's football has thus cycled through champion, heavy defeat while defending the title, and third place — a complete arc.

# Why did neither volleyball team make the top three?

Volleyball is the weakest of the nine categories covered here. In 2025-26, the men's official overall result was fourth place: 「1st 第一名 香港浸會大學 HKBU / 2nd 第二名 香港中文大學 CUHK / 3rd 第三名 香港理工大學 PolyU / 4th 第四名 香港城市大學 CityUHK」^※. The women's placing was lower still: the official results sheet shows CityU 7th among the 8 competing teams, 「7th 第七名 CityUHK 香港城市大學」^※, with HKBU taking both titles. This article found no public reporting on CityU's volleyball placings for 2024-25, so no direct season-on-season comparison is possible; this is recorded as "not found".

# Where did CityU finish in taekwondo, and who won the team's only individual gold?

Taekwondo is scored by cumulative team points, which gives a finer-grained picture than knockout placings. According to the official USFHK 2025-26 results sheet, CityU's taekwondo team finished 6th overall with 85 points (24 in poomsae plus 61 in sparring), while champions PolyU led with 291 — 「總得分 291 156 115 110 88 85 45」^※. Broken down by gender, CityU's men placed 5th overall (49 points) and the women 6th (36 points).

In individual events, CityU's Law Ming-kai, a male black-belt featherweight, was the team's only individual champion of the season: 「男子黑帶 羽量級 FEATHER 冠軍 羅銘楷 城大」^※. The low team score notwithstanding, that individual gold shows CityU still fields standout athletes at the individual level — they just have not yet translated into an improved team placing.

# How are athletics team points calculated, and why did CityU's women place fourth?

The 64th Annual Athletics Meet was held on 15 March 2026; team totals are compiled by converting each individual event placing into points and adding them up. The official results show the men's team standings listing only four teams — HKU, CUHK, HKBU and PolyU — meaning CityU did not finish in the top four of the men's team tally. In the women's team standings CityU placed 4th (fourth), with 58 points, against champions CUHK's 138; 「女子團體成績 CUHK 138 / HKU 134 / PolyU 117 / CityUHK 58」^※.

A low team tally does not mean no individual medals. The official event-by-event results show CityU's Lam Hoi-ling finishing second in the women's shot put with 9.97m (champion HKBU threw 10.39m), and CityU's Leung Ho-him second in the men's 400m hurdles in 57.44 seconds. The cumulative team scoring magnifies differences in squad size and event coverage — a team can win individual medals yet still fall far behind on team points if it does not enter enough events.

# Swimming is the sport that has actually held CityU up these past two seasons

Read only basketball and volleyball and this article could easily come across as one long downward line. But the 60th Annual Aquatic Meet (held on 26 October 2025) paints a very different picture: CityU's swimming total team points of 300.5 ranked 2nd overall, behind only CUHK's 310 and ahead of both PolyU (3rd, 250) and HKU (4th, 232) — 「團體總積分 CUHK 310 / CityUHK 300.5……PolyU 250 / HKU 232」^※.

Split by gender, the picture holds: CityU's men ranked 2nd with 174.5 points, again behind CUHK's 186; the women ranked 3rd with 126 points, behind HKU (164.5) and PolyU (134.5). In all three tallies — overall, men's and women's — CityU finished in the top three. Of the nine categories examined here, swimming is the one where CityU is most consistent and sits closest to its historical peak.

# Nine categories side by side: is CityU in "overall decline" or "partial retreat"?

Taken together, the data say the latter. The table below ranks the nine verified categories by official 2025-26 placing:

Of the nine categories, four finished in the top three (swimming team, men's football, women's football, women's basketball) and five placed fourth or lower (taekwondo team, men's volleyball, men's basketball, women's athletics team, women's volleyball). Set this list against the nine Grand Slam titles recorded in our article on <sports teams, inter-tertiary competitions and the rebuilding of sports facilities> and the starkest gap is in basketball — the one sport that featured in every one of CityU's nine Grand Slams, and in which both the men's and women's teams have now dropped out of the finals altogether. Swimming and football, meanwhile, show that CityU's investment in sport has not retreated across the board; it is simply no longer sweeping nearly every event as it did in its peak years.

# How should the nine Grand Slams and today's per-sport placings be read together?

CityU's ninth Grand Slam came in the 2016-17 season, according to official materials^※ from the Student Development Services (SDS) — nearly a decade ago. An overall Grand Slam depends on cumulative points across nearly all sports simultaneously, so even one or two flagship teams falling away can drag the total out of the top ranks. This is also why this article makes no attempt to reconstruct a cross-sport weighted aggregate table: the current USFHK website does not appear to host a stable, publicly accessible archive of historical total points, and stitching one together piecemeal would risk distorting the fact that each sport carries different weighting.

Results naturally carry on-the-day variance — the men's basketball team lost to HKU by just three points, the men's football final was decided by a single goal, and individual athletics medals are still coming in. But read the two downward curves in basketball and volleyball against the two steady curves in swimming and football, and you get closer to CityU's true position in the USFHK landscape than any single win or loss could convey: no longer the dominant force that reached finals in nearly every sport, yet far from out of the picture. In CityU's student society ecosystem, the SDS sports teams run alongside the sports clubs affiliated with the Student Union and academic departments, and swings in competitive results filter down to how ordinary students answer the question "is CityU good at sport?" — that strand of campus identity is explored in our article on <what makes CityU CityU>.

# Further reading

• Sports teams, inter-tertiary competitions and the rebuilding of sports facilities — CityU's nine USFHK Grand Slam titles and the rebuilding that followed the 2016 collapse of the sports hall roof
• The society and affiliated-club ecosystem — departmental societies, interest groups and the culture of student officerships — the sports club system beyond the SDS representative teams
• What makes CityU CityU — the character of a "small, sharp, young, international" university — how competitive records relate to campus identity
• Residence halls and hostel culture — the physical relationship between hall sports and representative team training