SU Spring Elections 2026 Interviews: Hugh Gunton, VP Sports

In the run-up to the Warwick Students’ Union (SU) Spring Elections, The Boar offered all Full-Time Officer (FTO) candidates the opportunity to be interviewed.

Hugh Gunton, one of the candidates for VP Sports, sat down with The Boar‘s incoming Co-News Editor, Maya Gordon, to discuss his campaign. He emphasised that Warwick Sport should always act in the best interests of students, regardless of their sporting level.

Why did you decide to run for this position?

Gunton described how, during his time at Warwick, he had begun to work more closely with the SU, especially as a member of the executive committee for the University’s rowing club.

The step up to VP Sports seemed natural, Gunton said, as it would then allow him “to improve the whole ecosystem and make sure that anyone that is engaged with sport in any way is having the best experience they could”.

What’s your experience with sports at Warwick?

When starting at Warwick, Gunton decided to branch out and make use of the taster sessions running in the first two weeks of his first term and decided to stick to rowing as a beginner. Going into his second year, he held the position of Beginners’ Captain before moving on to Club Captain in third year.

“For me, [rowing] really kind of changed my university experience […] I found most of my friends through rowing, I live with rowers”, Gunton said. “So much of my university experience is sport, not the other way around. It’s not sport as an add-on.”

Warwick Sport is currently undergoing a rebrand, with potential mission statements including ‘For the W’ and ‘Beyond is Where We Belong’. Do you think this Warwick Sport rebrand is an important step forward for student sport, and how will you continue to listen to the opinions of sports club members throughout the rebrand? 

Gunton pointed out how many sport clubs feel like individual clubs, rather than being part of a greater whole, drawing on his own personal experience. “We are missing a bit of the piece of the puzzle of what makes unis like Loughborough and Nottingham so successful with their sport […] We do need to bring us together.”

He also praised the current Sport office for their engagement with student voice, having felt that, in the focus groups he attended as a member of a student sport club, the SU had been keen to collaborate alongside students.

“Engaging with student community […] and refining that final concept a bit more” is something Gunton is eager to continue. He added: “It needs to keep being that active conversation of: ‘What do [students] want out of this rebrand?’”

How would you seek to support and improve sports clubs performances in both BUCS tournaments and non-BUCS competitions in the year ahead? 

Gunton said his answer lay in “long-term strategic planning for how clubs are going to get better” – as in, longer term than just one year. As execs refresh every year, and despite them doing a “fantastic job”, Gunton argued that clubs need central support that will create improvement in clubs over the longer term. One of the ways this can be achieved, Gunton believes, is through coaching.

At the moment, he believes Warwick Sport does not do as much as they could be doing to recruit or manage coaches for clubs.

“It’s not a case of taking that job away from the exec, because there’s so much value in having that student involvement, but giving that exec that power to really push on with that coaching.”

An article by The Boar in December found that 60% of students are unaware of when sports clubs are playing fixtures on campus, leading to low crowd turnouts for sports fixtures. The One Warwick programme last year drew crowds of only 400 people over two terms. How will you ensure Team Warwick isn’t just something that sports club members feel part of, but that every Warwick student feels part of through being able to support their peers? 

Gunton said he liked the initiative of One Warwick and it was a “shame” that it didn’t pull the crowds that would have been good to see. He suggested that instead of a weekly initiative, more build-up to big events would likely increase crowd turnout. He cited Friday Night Lights as an example for advertising big events over longer periods of time to boost student turnout, as well as Varsity. The longer-term strategy would be to use these standalone events to build up a culture of higher attendance at sporting fixtures.

The second part of the strategy for boosting turnout is more general awareness of Warwick’s sport infrastructure – “We don’t even make it easy for people to come along”. Improving signage and accessibility would be a key part of this side of the strategy. For example, putting up banners when teams are playing would create more of a “sports experience”, especially with the new rebrand of Warwick Sport identity.

Gunton’s closing comments were to push his feeling that Warwick Sport should act for all students: students who have never played sport before and want to, student athletes, and everyone in between.

This interview, along with all other interviews for Full-Time Officer positions, can be watched in full using the link here.

You can also view a list of all candidates and their manifestos here.