Lily Patey

My only experience in media came through my course, I hadn’t really worked in social media prior to the role but I always knew it was something that I wanted to do. So, through all of first year I was just on the portal looking for opportunities and then I stumbled across rugby MMC and just got involved and stuck in.

I was the MMC for Rugby Union which crossed between the women's and men’s programmes but I was mainly working with the men’s team. I would travel away for BSR Wednesdays and the same with Nat 2, so my week was full of games. I also supported the women’s team if they needed extra assistance.

The mentoring support was so useful. My mentor was Jack; he was incredible and always contactable, there was a couple of times where if I had an interview he would try and help me in any way and give feedback on presentations.

He was also interested in our individual sports, if anything came up about Rugby then he would always send it over. He also gave me the opportunity to attend the premier of a documentary he had worked on about women in rugby called ‘No Women, No Try’.

He was always thinking about ways to help me develop and network. Dawn was also always there if we needed any help with anything on her side.

For me it was firstly just getting involved and going out and doing it. In first year, I was someone that would never put themselves out there, but when I saw this role, it was just something I really wanted to do. On the first day I just turned up and met the programme manager and just went and got stuck in, which was daunting at first but I’m so happy I got involved!

In terms of projects, I think I’m most proud of our successful International Women’s Day campaign, especially as I was working within a men’s team. We got in contact with physios, S&C and performance analysis team managers who were all women and got to speak to them about their work.

You need to adapt and be ready for anything. In social media things change all the time, different trends come around and you have to understand that even if you had that idea 6 months previously, it may not work at the exact moment that you wanted to do it. That’s the biggest learning curve, just allowing things to change and go with the flow, you don’t have to have a complete set plan.

For me I’m currently on placement with Loughborough sport helping with their media and being a MMC volunteer fed into this role massively. I am now working with a massive number of sports, working with around 18 performance programmes, as well as sports without performance programmes. Being an MMC has given me a base understanding of not just how social media works but how it works in an institution and now I’m working on a much wider level. So being an MMC has been a stepping stone to something a lot bigger and more exciting!