Nouse.co.uk » College Rec and the Infamous £10,000 Sports Cash Controversy

College Rec and the Infamous £10,000 Sports Cash Controversy

February 10, 2009
Dan Hyde

They were supposed to revolutionise college sport but new-fangled College Recreational sessions have been branded a failure and “money down the drain” by York Sport.The brainchild of former Vanbrugh College Chair Matt Oliver, the sessions have cost over £10,000 of sought-after university discretionary funds, but have often been poorly attended or badly advertised within colleges. Experienced Halifax Sports Rep Simon Reed said: “it is a good idea, but the practicalities have not been well thought through. It would be far better to have some communication with the reps so that rather than just throw times at us and tell us to get on with it, we could decide on when the best slots would be.”

College Recreational works by providing regular ‘free’ open sessions for college members once a week per college, per sport. The difficulties lie in that these sessions are scattered sporadically throughout the week, often falling at inconvenient times. Criticism has surfaced from many college JCRCs and sports captains as training session have been arranged and rearranged, cancelled and miscommunicated. “I can’t even run my own session because I have lectures at that time during the day,” said Alcuin Basketball captain Ioannis Costas. “I didn’t even find out about it until week seven last term. It really hasn’t worked well for us.”

What has been a source of greater frustration to those highter up the heirarchy in the York Sport office is the financial potential sacrificed for a scheme that hasn’t delivered. York Sport President Alex Lacy said he was “irate” when he discovered that such a large sum of valuable discretionary funds had been “wasted” on the sessions.“It only came to my attention during the hand-over period [from former AU President Jo Carter] when I was scheduling sports training sessions and Matt asked me to book these other ones. He didn’t go through any consultation with us at all.”

Lacy believes that the money could have been better spent in other areas and expressed his frustration that there is little that York Sport can do to salvage the sessions at this late stage.
“I don’t think it was the right way to go out it in the first place and there are so many more positive things we could have done with that kind of money,” he said.“It was so depressing to watch £10,000 just go down the sink. That money would have covered the cost of five new clubs. That’s the sort of waste we’re talking about and that’s why i got so angry about it.”

Matt Oliver admitted the failure of the concept when questioned by Nouse and suggested that the problems originated the from severely limited time avaiblable for the project’s organisation.
“I had a week and a half to organise everything so that it would be in place by the time the freshers turned up last October. Not all the colleges got back to me with their preferences, so I had to go ahead and just schedule things in.”

Oliver believes that there is still a serious need for support at the lower levels of college sport – something that is yet to be addressed by York Sport.“Sport is undervalued at this university the college system certainly doesn’t get the backing it deserves. Although the sessions haven’t been ideal for everyone, it is a strat and certainly a move in the right direction.” Oliver believes that the concept still has a future but would only work under the individual direction of the college JCRCs.
“It would be great if York Sport would run it, but it would be a lot extra on top of what they already do. There really has to be a strong commitment from the JCRC s. There is a future but I’m not convinced that there is enough dedicated support yet.”

Alex Lacy, though, is adament that this is the incorrect approach to increasing participation and allowing more people to enjoy the various benefits of sport, which was one of Oliver’s main concerns back in third term last year. Instead Lacy feels that fitness training sessions must come before “kickabouts”. Lacy has the full support of the new Sports Centre manager Rob Wadsworth in his aerobic view of the future. Wadsworth has promised to introduce Yoga classes and as part of new programs aimed at increasing interest. Interestingly, he also plans to intrduce “Give it a Go” sessions in order to provide students with less experience the chance to try out new sports.