Loughborough

[Numbersaremything]

Loughborough is obviously a great university to go to if you are an elite sports person, but does that have a downside if you love sport but haven't participated at a top level? Are you still welcomed in clubs if you are a good local player but haven't trained at county or national level?

I think it could do. I know someone who went to Loughborough. They were a very keen player of one particular mainstream sport, probably just below county level. They didn't expect to get to get into the top teams, but didn't get into any of them.

If I remember rightly, they could train, but not compete.

I think that's my concern. I played the same sport as a teenager several times a week, then dropped it as soon as I went to university, as I knew that I was (literally!) in a different league. It's hard enough to get teenagers to play if their friends aren't sporty, let alone make them feel completely inferior.

I know someone who went and got into gymnastics that they hadn't done before as they obviously had great facilities. I'd be surprised if their werent opportunities to be on teams.

So maybe the 4 years of after school gymnastics lessons I forced DC to attend at primary school won't have been wasted!

I went to Loughborough in the late 90s. I am pretty unsporty, certainly nowhere need good enough to even be consider by their lower level teams. I actually found it made me less likely to participate - I had started playing squash (quite badly) in the 6th form at school, but there was no-one 'bad enough' to play against/train with at L'boro, so I gave up.

Was it a nice place to live though for 3 years & were there lots of other non sporty people there?

The people I know of that went there, friends of both DDs, went home to London quite a lot. One got into rowing even more than before. She stayed to train. Obviously it’s campus and the town won’t compare with Leeds, Bristol, Manchester etc. So be careful about that too. I think it can be marmite for humanities students with less contact time.

All very helpful, thank you.

Bearing in mind how long ago it was, and things might have changed: there were the people who went to study sport and play sport, the people who went to study something else and ended up being sucked into sport, and the people who were resolutely non-sport (me). The campus is OK, a lot of life revolves around the halls of residence, the SU is very active with societies (mostly sport ), lots of social activities. But it was very macho, very high male-female ratio, very rugby/10 pints of beer/ climb the Rigg Rutt tower and hang your mate's boxers off the top