The Sports Officer is responsible for overseeing sports and sporting events at the Guild of Students. They liaise with UBSport to ensure that sports and sporting activities at the University focus on mental and physical well being.

The candidates are listed alphabetically by surname. Voting opens on Monday  24th February and closes Friday 28th February. You can vote on the Guild of Students website.

Rob ‘The Hammerhead’ Hegarty

Rob ‘The Hammerhead’ Hegarty, a third-year Geography student, is running for Sports Officer on a manifesto based on inclusivity, fair representation, student health, improved communications, and empowering and rewarding students in university sport. He wants to be Sports Officer to share his ‘love and passion’ for sport, and to ‘encourage the participation, and fair participation of sport.’

Hegarty currently plays rugby at UoB in addition to boxing, and also participated in swimming at national level before coming to university. He stresses that this experience in sport, both as a beginner and at competitive levels gives him a ‘holistic view’ of sport, and ‘helps him to understand people’s motivations.’

Among his key pledges, Hegarty wants to give fair representation to all sports clubs, highlighting that whether clubs are ‘winning nationals or people might have just won their first game, hard works need to be praised.’

He also wants to support clubs that ‘provide both friendly and welcoming social events and encourage them to continue that’ to promote inclusivity in sports clubs.

Student health is also an important element of his manifesto, with both mental and physical health mentioned items to address, promoting healthy living across campus including increased dietary information, encompassing different preferences and needs such as vegan or vegetarian diets. On the issue of welfare in sports clubs, incorporating welfare training for committee members is something he would like to do if elected.

Other policies include improving communications between sports teams and educational staff, giving a platform for students to not miss out on work when participating in sport and to improve communications between sports clubs and UBSport. He also wants to ‘empower and reward students,’ fighting to ensure UBSport prioritise students, that they are able to access the facilities that are advertised to students when they apply. ‘Supporting the supporters’ is something he wants to bring in, making watching BUCS sport more accessible and enjoyable, with features that could be as simple as a scoreboard on the Bournbrook pitches, making games easier to follow.

On the issue of the negative reputation of the social aspect of university sport, Hegarty told Redbrick he’d never had any issues but noted the importance of social secretaries ‘being aware that no one should ever be pressured to do anything.’

He also suggested an anonymous platform for people to complain about malpractice within sports clubs – and possible match or social bans for offenders if there are individuals ruining the socials for everyone but noted these should be individual not group punishments.

‘We shouldn’t demonise entire sports teams for the bad behaviour of the minority.’

He also highlighted the importance of increasing participation, both with social media and widening the timeline in which people are encouraged to join sports, and take part in trials to improve mental and physical health on campus, and to improve the performance of UoB sports teams.

Keshav Sharda 

 Redbrick reached out to Keshav Sharda for an interview but did not receive a response.