Rex Hazeldine
With over 40 years’ experience in Loughborough Sport, Rex was a pioneering scientist-practitioner and coach educator, with an international reputation as one of the foremost experts in fitness prescription and development for sport.
He served as Director of Rugby for over 20 years and became the University’s first Director of the Centre for Coaching and Recreation, and he will receive a University Medal in December 2019.
Fitness development within coaching
Rex was a lecturer in Exercise Physiology and the Principles of Fitness and Training at the University and was internationally renowned for his work in the field of fitness development within coaching. During his time at the University, he was seconded to support Sue Campbell in the development of the National Coaching Foundation.
Over the course of three decades, he served as Sports Scientist to the England Men’s and Women’s Rugby Football Union Squads, the 1992 Barcelona Olympics Bronze Medal winning GB Hockey team, and the England Men’s and Women’s Lawn Bowls squads. He received the Geoffrey Dyson award for coaching and was inducted into the UK Coaching Hall of Fame in 2001.
Rex was a model example of the integration between coaching, academic activity in sport, performance sport, and student-athlete development on campus. His leadership over seven years as the Director of the Centre of Coaching and Recreation at the University laid the foundation for what is now the Sports Development Centre.
In his retirement, he has acted as Head Tutor of a newly formed Loughborough Sports Scholarship Foundation for elite student-athletes and formed part of the triumvirate who set up the Loughborough Sporting Club and Hall of Fame. Rex remains actively involved in Loughborough Sport and is currently the President of Loughborough Students’ Rugby.