For those that are active in the running of Abertay’s sport clubs, Pete Burgon is instantly recognisable as the man at the head the university’s sport union and it’s operation. For others who may use the gym or play for any of the teams, he may simply be seen as the man sitting behind the desk at the sport office taking in the sport fees or manning the desk while gym-users sign in and out. His surroundings which make him appear almost unnoticeable in the Graham Building, belies the importance and the impact his role has.
Many of the students that have been at the university long enough to remember the times when Ian Lowe was Sport Development Officer will recognise that a lot has changed within the Sport Union without knowing too much about the new man in charge. Pete comes across as a typical enthusiastic sportsperson, obviously willing to expend his energy into what he can in the field. “I’ve played sport all the way through school; jack of all trades, master of none, I suppose!” he says. “I was happy to get involved in everything but never found anything I particularly excelled at.” His interest in sport led him to Stirling University to study Sport & Psychology, also working in sport for Stirling Council and was then elected president of Stirling Uni’s Sport Union.
Two years followed working for the University of London Union to further broaden his own understanding of University Sport. “The University of London is made of 20 colleges varying in size.” He states that they ranged from the London school of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine which had 96 undergraduate students at one point, to University College London with 20,000 students – Abertay has just over 4,000. “Each of those colleges could deliver their own student union up to a certain point. The University of London Union, who I worked for, had to fill in the gaps. We were running sport clubs for those that couldn’t run on their own, and we were running leagues for those who could do their own teams. It was a real mix; that as a job was not comparable to what I’ve done before but that it gave me experience of the full spectrum of what goes on in university sport.”
Along with his girlfriend, he made the decision to end his time in London after two years and so took up the opportunity at Abertay back in Scotland. Though he had previously been working for Stirling, whose Sport Union is one of the leading Scottish universities in the BUCS rankings, and also working alongside one of the most prestigious universities in Britain, with Abertay he sees himself in a position where progression can be made and somewhere he wants to be while it happens. “There’s lots of potential here, a lot that could be really good. Abertay for its size does a lot of stuff but it’s a case of making improvements and it’s all about those 1%s. I’d like to be here for a good few years and I’d like to see a good progression.”
A feature of his role is one that he has difficulty comprehending in terms of a student service. Unlike many other Sport Unions in the country, Abertay’s Sport Development Officer is employed by the University in contrast to being an elected student officer being affiliated to the Student Association. Certainly, this holds particular issue with him as he describes what legacy he’d like to leave. “It’s no reflection on people who were here before me; I would like to empower everybody that does something here – the sport club captains, the students who work in the gym, the staff, across the board – have everybody feel capable that they can do things for themselves; I don’t think we are at that stage yet. I would like to leave here knowing, that people are in a situation where they can look after their own clubs, develop the gym using their own initiative, ask for the classes they want without having to be led.” This vision he admits may see that Abertay reaches that stage without anyone taking his role when he leaves. A student-led Sport Union is the direction that Burgon would like to lead, or perhaps send it.
“It’s a point I especially make to the sport clubs; this is their gig, I’m just the guy who helps it happen. Little things like the fixtures to the Sports Ball and the Varsity (annual Abertay vs. Dundee Uni competition), I want students involved and running these things as it’s them that are paying for them and enjoying it. I could run all that entirely how I’d like to and have a great time but it’s got to be what the students want otherwise there’s no point.”
So in his time with that philosophy, does he feel progress has been made on that? “I’d like to think so. Its baby steps, those 1%s.” Very clear on the matter, he feels that it’s key to student politics, that to have an active and motivated group involved is ‘gold’ however, if there is a group that doesn’t show the interest, to develop is a struggle. “Taking the Sports Clubs as an example, we try to run sport committee meetings and it’s a chance for two-way communication. That I’d describe as poorly subscribed last year but better this year. We now have a ‘sport union executive’; a group of captains that will be involved in organisation of the Ball, how Varsity runs and fundraising events. Involving students in Sport Union activities is a battle I feel I’m winning.”
To get any body or organisation to change when settled in their ways is always a battle, but is there a streak around campus of apathy to sport? Abertay is certainly more renowned for their developments in computing science than sport unlike a university like Stirling. “There are fewer barriers at Stirling Uni for sport. Here we do ok. Once people are engaged, we have all the services we need to offer people. We have a popular exercise programme, a gym open 13 hours a day during the week, successful health referral programmes.” The problem Pete states he has is awareness. On a visit to Stirling you see the National Swimming Centre and National Tennis Centre upon arrival. At Abertay, we have White Space and the new Centre for Excellence in Computer games. As for a culture of apathy, this is not an Abertay plight but one that is inherent in today’s culture. As Burgon says for example “nobody does it for you. We have a class called Body Blitz, if we called it a circuits class nobody would come – it’s a circuits class. We call it Body Blitz… and ladies love it. If you say to them if they want to do circuits, you’d get ‘nah, too hard, don’t fancy it’.”
A petition has been available to sign this semester pushing for the University to create our own sport facility complex and this is a step that Pete feels must be taken soon. However, he feels this is another area that the students must take responsibility for to push through by showing there is an interest. “The major stumbling block to step-up is facilities. We can only afford to have teams train once a week. Facilities would be everything. The petition is positive, it’s all very well saying it’s what we need but the students must be interested. We’ve been asking the university for facilities for ages, even before my time and have been ignored. If students can ask and push it through, it certainly won’t do any harm”. Abertay now has a new, shiny Centre of Excellence for Computing to go with White Space and also hosts the prestigious Dare to be Digital competition; so does the computing culture drown out the noise the sporting culture makes? Pete replies, “I don’t know; you could make all sorts of assumptions. We’re a university and we’re here for academic progress. The university may not be aware of the powers that facilities have in recruitment and creating a happier, more productive and retentive student body. That’s the responsibility of the staff - we should be making them aware”. So with students needing to press the university for facilities and staff having to press the advantages, it appears that the campaign for our own complex must become more strategically organised and delivered if this is to be achieved. Communication lines must be linked better between university and student. If the ‘sport union executive’ is the way forward then it must point to a way that Abertay’s sporting students are better represented and served. Certainly the grumblings of discontent among Abertay’s teams and athletes haven’t managed to attain suitable facilities in the last 15 years. Pete feels that if he remained for 5 years, due to the processes that would involve creating facilities, he doubts something would be in place in his time. Within the decade, though? “Yes! If I was to come back 10 years after finishing with Abertay and there were no facilities, I’d be gutted, and would bang a few doors down.”
Resources seem to be an issue and when questioned whether he felt there was enough in place to allow Abertay Sports to develop, his answer came without doubt - “Not far enough. The budget has remained the same as last year. In terms of that we can’t develop much. What I’ve seen is clubs have become more active to fund themselves. There are also opportunities to develop outwith the financial. I’m positive about the rugby team’s relationship with Morgan RFC. They can play their fixtures at Morgan that can lead to availability of equipment and coach support. The Dance & Cheer team have built on their foundations last year and have developed membership, brought in more income to use external facilities and become more active.”
So with the restrictions on the Sport Union’s funding, memberships of each club become critical to their operation. Sport Union fees go straight to the sport union and, with the heavy imbalance between Sport Union income and expenditure, the £20 a player would spend does become good value on travel and money for facilities to fulfil fixtures and to train. “Money at the end of the year that isn’t budgeted doesn’t get carried over so I have to look at how that money can be spent”, he adds. “In the gym, we had money to spend on portable mirrors that can now be used for any dance or exercise class. Beyond a club members £20, any more money that a club funds to me, that is ring-fenced for that club and is the clubs to spend.” What Pete then expects is that extra money raised gets banked through him so to be aware how each club’s money may be used.
So with the challenges facing Abertay Sport, Pete is assured that students will represent the university well when faced by others. “One of the things I like about Abertay is people do get involved and endeavour to ‘wear the crest’ - that gets me going. It’s difficult with the restrictions we have and we have to make the best of what we’ve got. I don’t expect to go climbing the BUCS rankings but people to make the best of what we’ve got. We have the women’s basketball team, who have won the league and cup last season, promoted and are undefeated this season; we have others who have struggled. The good thing about my job is the results in the Thursday morning from the students. The netball had a torrid time last season, and the first game of the season they beat Strathclyde 29-25 and reading the e-mail you can see the smile on Lela’s face typing that up.”
Pete’s message to the students is an all-encompassing “get involved, whatever that means to you.” There are so many ways that Abertay Sport needs everyone to get involved to progress forward as a whole. He has made it clear that facilities can’t be handed to us when we think it should and that he expects the Sport Union to become more self-determinate. Hopefully 2009/10 will bring the same if not more success for teams on the field this season however, the message from Pete Burgon seems that for the Sport Union to be able to develop, the club and union members may have to get a lot more involved off the pitch than what they have been on it.
Many of the students that have been at the university long enough to remember the times when Ian Lowe was Sport Development Officer will recognise that a lot has changed within the Sport Union without knowing too much about the new man in charge. Pete comes across as a typical enthusiastic sportsperson, obviously willing to expend his energy into what he can in the field. “I’ve played sport all the way through school; jack of all trades, master of none, I suppose!” he says. “I was happy to get involved in everything but never found anything I particularly excelled at.” His interest in sport led him to Stirling University to study Sport & Psychology, also working in sport for Stirling Council and was then elected president of Stirling Uni’s Sport Union.
Two years followed working for the University of London Union to further broaden his own understanding of University Sport. “The University of London is made of 20 colleges varying in size.” He states that they ranged from the London school of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine which had 96 undergraduate students at one point, to University College London with 20,000 students – Abertay has just over 4,000. “Each of those colleges could deliver their own student union up to a certain point. The University of London Union, who I worked for, had to fill in the gaps. We were running sport clubs for those that couldn’t run on their own, and we were running leagues for those who could do their own teams. It was a real mix; that as a job was not comparable to what I’ve done before but that it gave me experience of the full spectrum of what goes on in university sport.”
Along with his girlfriend, he made the decision to end his time in London after two years and so took up the opportunity at Abertay back in Scotland. Though he had previously been working for Stirling, whose Sport Union is one of the leading Scottish universities in the BUCS rankings, and also working alongside one of the most prestigious universities in Britain, with Abertay he sees himself in a position where progression can be made and somewhere he wants to be while it happens. “There’s lots of potential here, a lot that could be really good. Abertay for its size does a lot of stuff but it’s a case of making improvements and it’s all about those 1%s. I’d like to be here for a good few years and I’d like to see a good progression.”
A feature of his role is one that he has difficulty comprehending in terms of a student service. Unlike many other Sport Unions in the country, Abertay’s Sport Development Officer is employed by the University in contrast to being an elected student officer being affiliated to the Student Association. Certainly, this holds particular issue with him as he describes what legacy he’d like to leave. “It’s no reflection on people who were here before me; I would like to empower everybody that does something here – the sport club captains, the students who work in the gym, the staff, across the board – have everybody feel capable that they can do things for themselves; I don’t think we are at that stage yet. I would like to leave here knowing, that people are in a situation where they can look after their own clubs, develop the gym using their own initiative, ask for the classes they want without having to be led.” This vision he admits may see that Abertay reaches that stage without anyone taking his role when he leaves. A student-led Sport Union is the direction that Burgon would like to lead, or perhaps send it.
“It’s a point I especially make to the sport clubs; this is their gig, I’m just the guy who helps it happen. Little things like the fixtures to the Sports Ball and the Varsity (annual Abertay vs. Dundee Uni competition), I want students involved and running these things as it’s them that are paying for them and enjoying it. I could run all that entirely how I’d like to and have a great time but it’s got to be what the students want otherwise there’s no point.”
So in his time with that philosophy, does he feel progress has been made on that? “I’d like to think so. Its baby steps, those 1%s.” Very clear on the matter, he feels that it’s key to student politics, that to have an active and motivated group involved is ‘gold’ however, if there is a group that doesn’t show the interest, to develop is a struggle. “Taking the Sports Clubs as an example, we try to run sport committee meetings and it’s a chance for two-way communication. That I’d describe as poorly subscribed last year but better this year. We now have a ‘sport union executive’; a group of captains that will be involved in organisation of the Ball, how Varsity runs and fundraising events. Involving students in Sport Union activities is a battle I feel I’m winning.”
To get any body or organisation to change when settled in their ways is always a battle, but is there a streak around campus of apathy to sport? Abertay is certainly more renowned for their developments in computing science than sport unlike a university like Stirling. “There are fewer barriers at Stirling Uni for sport. Here we do ok. Once people are engaged, we have all the services we need to offer people. We have a popular exercise programme, a gym open 13 hours a day during the week, successful health referral programmes.” The problem Pete states he has is awareness. On a visit to Stirling you see the National Swimming Centre and National Tennis Centre upon arrival. At Abertay, we have White Space and the new Centre for Excellence in Computer games. As for a culture of apathy, this is not an Abertay plight but one that is inherent in today’s culture. As Burgon says for example “nobody does it for you. We have a class called Body Blitz, if we called it a circuits class nobody would come – it’s a circuits class. We call it Body Blitz… and ladies love it. If you say to them if they want to do circuits, you’d get ‘nah, too hard, don’t fancy it’.”
A petition has been available to sign this semester pushing for the University to create our own sport facility complex and this is a step that Pete feels must be taken soon. However, he feels this is another area that the students must take responsibility for to push through by showing there is an interest. “The major stumbling block to step-up is facilities. We can only afford to have teams train once a week. Facilities would be everything. The petition is positive, it’s all very well saying it’s what we need but the students must be interested. We’ve been asking the university for facilities for ages, even before my time and have been ignored. If students can ask and push it through, it certainly won’t do any harm”. Abertay now has a new, shiny Centre of Excellence for Computing to go with White Space and also hosts the prestigious Dare to be Digital competition; so does the computing culture drown out the noise the sporting culture makes? Pete replies, “I don’t know; you could make all sorts of assumptions. We’re a university and we’re here for academic progress. The university may not be aware of the powers that facilities have in recruitment and creating a happier, more productive and retentive student body. That’s the responsibility of the staff - we should be making them aware”. So with students needing to press the university for facilities and staff having to press the advantages, it appears that the campaign for our own complex must become more strategically organised and delivered if this is to be achieved. Communication lines must be linked better between university and student. If the ‘sport union executive’ is the way forward then it must point to a way that Abertay’s sporting students are better represented and served. Certainly the grumblings of discontent among Abertay’s teams and athletes haven’t managed to attain suitable facilities in the last 15 years. Pete feels that if he remained for 5 years, due to the processes that would involve creating facilities, he doubts something would be in place in his time. Within the decade, though? “Yes! If I was to come back 10 years after finishing with Abertay and there were no facilities, I’d be gutted, and would bang a few doors down.”
Resources seem to be an issue and when questioned whether he felt there was enough in place to allow Abertay Sports to develop, his answer came without doubt - “Not far enough. The budget has remained the same as last year. In terms of that we can’t develop much. What I’ve seen is clubs have become more active to fund themselves. There are also opportunities to develop outwith the financial. I’m positive about the rugby team’s relationship with Morgan RFC. They can play their fixtures at Morgan that can lead to availability of equipment and coach support. The Dance & Cheer team have built on their foundations last year and have developed membership, brought in more income to use external facilities and become more active.”
So with the restrictions on the Sport Union’s funding, memberships of each club become critical to their operation. Sport Union fees go straight to the sport union and, with the heavy imbalance between Sport Union income and expenditure, the £20 a player would spend does become good value on travel and money for facilities to fulfil fixtures and to train. “Money at the end of the year that isn’t budgeted doesn’t get carried over so I have to look at how that money can be spent”, he adds. “In the gym, we had money to spend on portable mirrors that can now be used for any dance or exercise class. Beyond a club members £20, any more money that a club funds to me, that is ring-fenced for that club and is the clubs to spend.” What Pete then expects is that extra money raised gets banked through him so to be aware how each club’s money may be used.
So with the challenges facing Abertay Sport, Pete is assured that students will represent the university well when faced by others. “One of the things I like about Abertay is people do get involved and endeavour to ‘wear the crest’ - that gets me going. It’s difficult with the restrictions we have and we have to make the best of what we’ve got. I don’t expect to go climbing the BUCS rankings but people to make the best of what we’ve got. We have the women’s basketball team, who have won the league and cup last season, promoted and are undefeated this season; we have others who have struggled. The good thing about my job is the results in the Thursday morning from the students. The netball had a torrid time last season, and the first game of the season they beat Strathclyde 29-25 and reading the e-mail you can see the smile on Lela’s face typing that up.”
Pete’s message to the students is an all-encompassing “get involved, whatever that means to you.” There are so many ways that Abertay Sport needs everyone to get involved to progress forward as a whole. He has made it clear that facilities can’t be handed to us when we think it should and that he expects the Sport Union to become more self-determinate. Hopefully 2009/10 will bring the same if not more success for teams on the field this season however, the message from Pete Burgon seems that for the Sport Union to be able to develop, the club and union members may have to get a lot more involved off the pitch than what they have been on it.
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