Interview with James Ellis

What is your experience of Warwick Sport and the University in general so far?

Warwick Sport’s James Ellis: I have been here since March and my immediate impression is that sport has a huge impact on people’s lives at the university. It is an important part of extracurricular activity at Warwick. The facilities are very good, especially the outdoor facilities. I would regard Cryfield as one of the best sports complexes outside the professional game in the UK, with the cricket, rugby and football pitches that it has. I am very impressed with how Warwick Sport works, the way it is set up is fantastic, and with 10,000 people joining it shows that people place value on sport here.

Describe your typical week?

My week starts with a 7am training session with the 1st and 2nd teams of the football club on the tarkett pitch. Coaching with the men’s football club is something that I really enjoy as being able to train on a Monday morning and go to the games on Wednesday afternoons breaks my week up and keeps me in the reality that I am at a university and not in private sector sport. My working week is based around managing the fitness staff, the pavilion staff and the sports development team. So my job is very varied in terms of looking after different programs. Also, a major part of my role is trying to bring in external partners and income, so that we can bring in income and funding that doesn’t impact on staff and student activity but allows us to keep the Warwick Sport membership at a minimum. It’s a great job and I work with some great

people.

How did you get into university sport?

I studied for an undergraduate and then an MSc in 1996 at Loughborough and then was persuaded to run for and eventually take the position of Athletic Union President (the equivalent of Sports Officer at Warwick). This is at a point where I had given up playing football and started taking my coaching badges as I got badly injured which forced me to retire from playing. I coached with the university football team and at Crystal Palace Football Academy almost full time. The Director of Sport then asked me to stay at Loughborough to work on a new community development programme. It was a difficult decision because I wanted a job in football, but I took on the job and organised the commercial sports events and the many projects that we organised through it. I then started taking over the football program which led me to being Director of Football at Loughborough and I landed a community job and worked my way up the ladder. We then restructured at Loughborough a year ago and I was one of the senior managers in charge of performance sports. My role was to look after the coaching staff in football, tennis, badminton, netball and cricket. After this I then decided to come to Warwick.

How does Warwick Sport differ from that of Loughborough?

The offer here for students at the recreational participation level is a lot better. Warwick Sport membership is geared towards that. It is a lot more common for students to go and play a game of badminton with their mates or set up a five-a-side football team at Warwick and it is more accessible. There is much to be learnt from both sides. When I worked at Loughborough I brought staff here to learn about the participation side and there are obviously things that I can take from the elite level of sport at Loughborough and implement them here. Yet in many ways you can’t put Loughborough and Warwick in the same category. At Loughborough, sport is important to a different level there. There are 300-400 athletes taking part at the elite level and national governing bodies base themselves in Loughborough. So you have the support of the high performance directors in certain governing bodies having a vested interest in recruiting students to Loughborough, this is something that we can never compete at. In basic terms it seems that the focus of the last 20 years at Warwick seemed to be about getting students and staff to take part in sport. I don’t think this needs to be overturned as it has been very successful but it can always be improved upon.

What does Warwick need to do to improve?

I think Warwick finished 21st in the sports league tables last year, that is not good enough and it is definitely an area that we can improve on. We feel that the middle section of participation between the recreational level and the elite level of sports is crucial for this. Getting people from the bottom group to the top is actually quite a big jump, therefore maintaining links between these levels is very important. The elite level can certainly improve but this can only happen if internally we give people the opportunity to develop and move through these groups and get into these sports clubs. Intramural sports will provide pathways for sports to develop and improve at the elite level of competition right down to those playing at a recreational or casual level. Some people fall through the net and hould be playing at a higher level of sport, and we can give them the opportunity to do this. The intramural sports have the potential to not only provide a complete pathway for participation in sport at university but also have the ability to break down cultural and structural barriers.

In different sports we have some high performance athletes here and I wonder whether we could do more to support them. Yes, Warwick is a Russell Group university and yes, it has high academic standards, but it depends on how you value performance. I look at performance as: yes, you are all studying, but that is no different from people at other universities. For example, a swimmer at Loughborough may be on an Engineering degree – so they are in 10-6 everyday, but they are in the pool at 5am swimming for two hours, they are in the pool at lunchtime, they are in the pool in the evening and they train 365 days a year. That is no different to the life of a Warwick student; what is different is the desire, the commitment and the compromise. Something has got to give; you can’t be a high performance athlete and go out on the drink every Wednesday night, Friday night and Saturday night. If you want it enough, it doesn’t matter whether you are studying or not, or studying a degree in manufacturing or a degree in Basketball, it comes down to the individual. What we can do better here is create an environment which allows those that want to fulfil their potential in sport to do so, and those who want to play for recreation or just want to play on a Wednesday afternoon can also take part. I think it is not about forcing the agenda, it is about creating opportunities.

What role does sport play at university?

Sport at university has got to relate to some kind of life experience and get you prepared for the real world where you have to stand on your own two feet. The ethos I have learnt through working in football and at Loughborough was that if you develop the person you end up developing the sport. For example, with a group of netball girls, if you end up investing time on them as people then you will see their productivity on the court becoming greater and results will follow. If you do it the other way round, if you try and develop the sport, develop the netballer without understanding what the person is about, I find that you don’t get very far. At the elite level, the person isn’t so much an issue but at universities, organisation and investing time in people is important. I try and live my life and manage my team like a football team, in the terms that they need to be organised, they need to understand what their roles and responsibilities are, they need to know where they fit in the bigger picture and most importantly for me, they need to enjoy it. If you can live your life like this then you have got a chance of making it in whatever you want to be, whether it is an investment banker or a cleaner. Academia doesn’t teach you that turning up to lectures and sitting exams provides the educational environment and an end product, but I feel sport gives you an opportunity to learn about life, about people, about working in a group, about training and working in a team or on your own. All these things you do as an athlete, and it doesn’t matter what level, you can still probably transfer them all to work and life. As well as this you have the healthy and well-being agenda that sport provides. So by the end of your degree you look back and you may have a 2:1 or a 1st but you can say that I understand leadership, I understand teamwork, I understand self control, I understand discipline, I understand compromise, I understand motivation, I understand self-sacrifice and I am not convinced, because I have done it, studying teaches you that. I know that I am biased and I would say this as I work in sport, but as you are in a competitive environment and a degree may not be enough, sport can show skills that can relate to jobs and can help you capture them. I am not saying that sport is the only way to get these skills, I am aware that some people don’t like to take part in sport, but sport certainly teaches you aspects of life that you don’t pick up simply in academia.

Given the current financial climate, is funding a problem for Warwick Sport?

Sport needs to represent value for money. There will be a finite pot of money that will have to be spread across competing needs and competing departments. The facilities here attract a lot of elite level sporting competitions. For example the England U16’s football team are coming here in March for three days before they play Northern Ireland and the Premier League are again hosting the Nike Premier cup here in April. I have also spoken to the England Netball U15’s about a summer training camp and as the Olympics come closer we also have to opportunity to get involved in that as well. But if we treat students as customers, we need to ask how are we going to persuade the customer that the university is now investing to ensure that students will come to Warwick? Because as tuition fees go up, all areas of the University will come under more scrutiny. When a student is deciding which university to go to, their decision may not simply be down to the strength of the course; I believe it will become based more around the peripheral things such as sport, the arts or accommodation and certainly for international students, this needs to represent value for money. As a department of the University we want to contribute to the University’s bottom line but also make sure that this does not compromise our offer to staff and students, we want to keep membership costs to a minimum.

Finally, in your time here or at Loughborough, have you experienced a Varsity day before?

When I was at Loughborough we didn’t have a varsity day like this, we simply assessed ourselves against the nearest rivals in each sport, whether it be Birmingham or Bath. I was here last year and it was a great day with so much going on, and I am certainly looking forward to it again this year.

James is happy to talk to anyone interested in working in the sports industry at any level. Email him at: j.a.ellis@warwick.ac.uk