The strange death of university sport: Archery
Action from the Roses tournament in 2008. Even at university standard, Archery is an equipment-intensive sport. Photograph by George Lowther
A lot has changed for sport at the University of York in the past couple of years, and not all of it has been for the better. The recent massive budget cuts are just one part of this.
I had heard that some clubs were having their budgets cut by as much as two-thirds, and this seemed incredible until it happened to us at the Archery Club.
My reason for writing here is not to sound off about the budget cuts – I’m sure this will happen through all the student media outlets – but rather to give a brief outline of how this and other problems are affecting sport at York.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that a club losing two-thirds of its budget is going to have to make some serious cutbacks. For many clubs, it will be necessary to increase the membership fees, potentially driving away newcomers.
For equipment-intensive sports, amongst which archery certainly counts itself, the budget cuts will mean less new equipment for the training of beginners and fewer repairs to our existing kit. These are things that virtually all sports clubs at York are now facing.
Added to this major problem are a host of others. For clubs that use the Sports Centre, relations are becoming somewhat strained. Sports clubs have become enforcers for the combined York Sport/Sports Centre membership.
This change was made last year and it is a good idea in that it saves money for the majority of people. However, not everyone is willing to pay it at the start of term, and you can tell people about it until you are blue in the face, but many do not pay immediately. Queues build up at the front desk, and the clubs are blamed. Having to apologetically enforce someone else’s rules is a remarkably awkward experience.
The problems continue. When I wanted to speak to the sports centre staff about additional coaching passes, I was told to speak to the York Sport President, who would plead our club’s case for us. This seems like a lot of extra bureaucracy for all concerned, but there is a hint of something more sinister. Last I heard, campus facilities were there for the benefit of students. Now, it seems, we have to go through an intermediary to get our voices heard.
What all this really means is simple. It is becoming increasingly difficult to run a sports club at this university. Bureaucracy creates disillusionment amongst existing members. Lack of investment means that equipment standards are going down and membership costs are rising, deterring the newcomers who are so crucial to all clubs.
Of course, there is some kind of financial crisis. But contrary to popular belief, not all students are riding it out on a carefree wave of student loans and cheap pints.
University sports should be accessible to all, with reasonable resources to ensure that we can attract and retain new members, without having to pit ourselves against the organisations that are supposedly here for our benefit.
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The Union is faced with a zero sum game. Money going into one area has to come from another area.
Maybe it’s time we looked at the amount YUSU spends on Sabbatical Officers. Can anyone tell me why sports isn’t included under the term “student activities”? Lets fold YorkSport into that job, and allocate the 14k+ year into the sports’ clubs funds…?
The management of the AU over the past 3 years has been consistently terrible over the last 3 years.
For our club, cycling club, our membership has increased from 15 paid up members in 2007 to 35 paid up members now, and yet our budget has been cut by 2/3rds.
We now receive less than £10 per member from the University, we get far more from our own membership fees.
We have also been told that our recently redesigned team kit is not in the university colours and therefore we must redesign and re-order it.
This isn’t a big deal when it’s just a jersey and shorts, but specialist cycling clothing costs hundreds of pounds per person, of our own money!
They really need to sort themselves out.
Aims of the AU- get as much money as possible for sports clubs from the Uni, minimise administrative work for clubs, bugger off and leave us to it. Get your act sorted out!
Josh,
a) it’s not been the AU for ages.
b) “consistently terrible” is exactly the opposite – the last 3 years has been very kind to some clubs and harsher to others: I didn’t even know there was a cycling club this time yesterday so it obviously doesn’t just need some help from YUSU…
And yes, the colours should all match. So it causes a couple of problems for people in the short term; I’m not sure that the rule is you need to have a new kit by tomorrow… if there are financial problems with it then you can apply to YUSU for more funds in response, surely?