Loughborough Students’ Athletic Union set to transition to the Sport Development Centre

General news
an image of a Loughborough branded hurdle

Image provided by Ben Lumley Photography.

Over the past few years, Loughborough Students’ Athletic Union (AU) has developed an increasingly diverse sporting offering (delivered through its Athletic Union Clubs) alongside experiencing a rapid expansion of members. As a result of this continued expansion, the Athletic Union has been placed under increasing pressure to facilitate the demand for support, resources, and access to professional expertise all whilst the staff resource available has remained much the same.

In order to ensure an exceptional student experience for current members, whilst continuing to sustain sporting successes and facilitate the ever-growing demand for sporting opportunities within the world’s leading university for sport - LSU’s Board of Trustees considered proposals on how additional resources could be brought to the AU.

As a result of the investigation and its subsequent findings, the LSU Board of Trustees recently approved to transfer the operational delivery and managerial support for 62 Athletic Union Clubs, in full, from Loughborough Students’ Athletic Union (AU) to the Loughborough University Sport Development Centre (SDC) with an anticipated completion date of the 31st of August 2022. Whilst there have been considerable amounts of discussion to reach this stage, the transition is anticipated to provide a greater level of staff support for both AU clubs and their members whilst delivering a more cohesive programme of sport through the shared use of resources and development opportunities across all of Loughborough’s sporting programmes.

The main objective of the transition is to provide an improved experience for those participating within the AU whilst also developing its structures to better facilitate and support the key components of the Loughborough sporting offer (such as coaching, mentoring and training). Furthermore, due to recent growth across the AU, the transition will ensure additional resource will be available to service the significant administration functions required to facilitate the ever-growing AU operations

Whilst there will be significant changes to the resources and delivery structures, the student voice, and the number of student opportunities within the AU will be maintained along with the responsibilities of the AU Executive Team with Sport Executive Officer, AU Exec and AU Club Committees acting within LSU as the key representatives for students within sport. The Sport Executive Officer will continue to lead the AU Executive as the AU President and be the AU strategic lead, but the input of additional resource will ensure the Sport EO has the ability to more effectively represent and advocate for all students who want to get involved in sport at Loughborough without the need to support the operational delivery of its functions.