Best UK universities for sport

[thing47]

Anyone see this weekend's article about the top universities for sport in the UK? It was on the back of talking about The Boat Race but made the point that neither Oxford nor Cambridge are in the overall top 10 for sport any more (although still very strong in rowing). Not obviously a massive issue for the vast majority of students, but an interesting stat nonetheless.

My DS was similar but he had played hockey at Durham on an away team and fell for it. He went as a county hockey player and a solid tennis player. He captained one college team and was vice for the other but did not play at BUCS level. He also played lacrosse all 3 years and tried rowing for a year. Sport was a huge part of his enjoyment of university.

"With a student participation rate of 75%, Durham has a higher percentage of physically active students than any other institution in Britain." https://www.durham.ac.uk/colleges-and-student-experience/team-durham/participation/#:~:text=Durham%20has%20a%20student%20participation%20rate%20of,*%20Have%20physical%20and%20mental%20health%20benefits

For anyone who has sporty dc, don’t get start struck by BUCS title winning reputations. these winning teams will often be populated by professional level athletes and your average good egg at school (A team captains, county players etc) won’t get near the first teams in unis known for high performance in certain sports.
also different unis for different sports. Cricket for example is only played at UCCE equivalent level at half a dozen places - and they aren’t all top grade unis to get into either.
so if you’re after a high level sports programme for your dc to enjoy, check you choose an appropriate uni so they actually get into a meaningful team. Durham men’s hockey for example take not more than a dozen freshers into the squad in sept. You can’t join later. Most freshers end up in the 4s or 5s unless they have played national leagues in which case only then can they be considered for pre season training in August before trials days (expect multiple
rounds/call
backs) . Regional men’s prem players is not good enough. This can be a shock to many school A team
players who just won’t even get into uni sport squads and are relegated to college level sport only.

One elite sport per child. No one can commit to two! The training regimes are intense.
but choose your sport and then see which unis specialise in it and if it’s even likely your child will get a squad place. Loughborough men’s cricket for example - you’d want to have a rookie pro contract to be certain of a first team place or at the very least be in a first class county academy programme. Ditto the other ucce cricket unis. Anything less and it’s likely 3s type uni fun cricket.

Nottingham

At Sheffield we had a lot of high level swimmers and divers who did their degrees alongside training at Ponds Forge. A girl on my course became an Olympian

Plus one for college sport at Durham. The Durham college football league has seven divisions and 100 plus teams. Every college has at least 5 teams, also staff, international students etc etc. For less popular sports the colleges sometimes join up to make make sure they have a squad eg Ultimate Frisbee.

This is light years from BUCS, but anyone who wants participation in sport can find it through their college.

I have a feeling Oxbridge used to get a more well rounded sort of person (still very bright) back in the day. Nowadays, you have a lot of 'bots' (as I call them) who do nothing but study, study, study - I guess easier to really ace the tests now with everything online and you have the Far East work ethic really playing a part here. It's quite sad as that diversity is not there anymore.

I find this really interesting.

I have dc who are good but not stellar - so club and county but not regional/national. They would want to be somewhere they could continue to train and compete with like minded peers, but they wouldn't want to be somewhere you had to be world class just to get a look in.

One of mine will be most swayed by good access to a swimming pool for eg - where might that be?

Both Birmingham (University of) and UEA have 50m pools on site. Lots of universities have swimming pools as part of their sports complexes.

I know a young person who was sought out by Durham at application and given a bursary for her sport. Sounded like an extremely professional (and very competitive) set up. Lots of semi-pros being brought in from the USA etc. As a sedentary sort of person I was surprised — I hadn’t realised uni level sport operated like that, or that a uni like Durham put those sorts of resources into it. (Not complaining - it was just news to me. I don’t quite understand what elite sport has to do with university! But then my idea of sport is putting the Xmas decorations in the loft)

One of mine was captain of his college soccer team at Oxford and he is NOT particularly good at football 😂 As pp said of Cambridge, lots of the colleges at Oxford band together to put out even a first team. He really enjoyed it but treated it as a total laugh/de-stressor, nothing serious at all. And he really struggled to get other students to play, even when he told them how low the stakes were. I got the impression most of the college sport at Oxford is on that level. The academics come first for most of the students, and tutors have no inclination to rearrange tutorials or labs (including at weekends) to avoid clashing with fixtures. Some individual kids are really talented at their sport but they’re very much the exception and are often getting training elsewhere.

50m pool at Loughborough uni
50m pool in Sheffield tho not on uni site

You don’t have to be world class anywhere to have the chance to play and compete btw. Yes to run 100m for BUCS you need to be running sub 11.5 - for places like Bath or Brum or Luffers. But yunno, you can still train and take part at your level.

ETA yeh Durham won the American footy top level at BUCS this year. I heard a lot of American accents from the sidelines. Nottingham and UWE do the same.

One of mine was captain of his college soccer team at Oxford and he is NOT particularly good at football

I was at Oxford 30 odd years ago, our college team was shit but one of our friends was very good and he got a blue for playing for the University, we went to Craven Cottage to watch the game and saw the boat race go past as well.

All the colleges had rowing clubs as well but to get a blue you had to be really good, only one of our friends was even in a University squad.

I think it was one of the nice thinks about the University that the college system meant there was lots of sporting opportunities at all levels, everyone I knew did something sporty.And FWIW Cambridge has stats that suggest their elite sports people actually do better than average academically.

What’s in it for the unis? Do they see it as encouraging applications or something? (Again, I have no objections, I’m just interested.)

They want to win :)

I mean unis prioritise different sports; ds has found that Luffers is not that fussed about his sport but it is very keen on eg swimming and athletics among others.

If a uni does well at sport, it’s a big selling point to attract students.

’They want to win’ 😁 I guess so!