“I want to be able to win an away Roses. I want my name on that.”
Cassandra Brown, incoming York Sport President, can’t be accused of lacking ambition. Away Roses are notoriously difficult to win, and with the cycle falling on Lancaster to host in 2014, York will have its work cut out to retain the Carter-James Trophy.
“I think we’ve got a great chance. In the last few years, when we win we win by a bigger margin than we lose by.”
It may be months away, but Roses remains the stand-out event for any York Sport President. There’s more to her ambition than simply winning Roses though. A lot of her plans may assist that Roses objective, but they are also likely to help teams throughout this year, and in years to come.
That started last week with pre-season. “We’ve had fitness sessions, sports-specific training, we’ve had some professional coaches in and there’s been a couple of friendly matches which is new this year.”
Pre-season events haven’t been limited to on-the-field activities though. York Sport has hosted talks which intend to provide help to the clubs.
Visitors have included Peter Ashcroft (York’s strength and conditioning coach), University Nutrition – who even gave advice on the “perfect hangover cure” – and John Roberts from the Rugby Football League.
“John did a talk on sports culture and changing your culture, as well as aligning strategy, which was very interesting because of what I want to do this year in emphasising how clubs are also part of the Union, and the achievements of clubs are also achievements for the union.”
While York has a number of very successful sports clubs, Brown hopes to make the spirit of unity between them stronger. That support between clubs could be crucial come the trip to Lancaster in May.
Firstly, though, clubs have their BUCS fixtures. Last year’s York Sport President, Charlotte Winter, spearheaded the Top 40 campaign, which came up just short as York finished 43rd in BUCS points.
“I’m not going to stop the top forty campaign at all, but what I want to do this year is make it more than a hashtag. There wasn’t really any strategy in place [to achieve it].
“I’m going to sit down with Keith Morris [the University’s Head of Sport] and the clubs that are verging on 40th in the BUCS leagues and see how we can help them.”
With the nature of university sport seeing a high turnover of players year on year, it’s difficult to predict which teams will soar this year.
Asked who her teams to watch were, Brown replied: “Watch the men’s rugby 1sts, they’ve just been promoted to the BUCS Premiership. Obviously it’s a very vulnerable position when you’ve just been promoted from Division 1A, and now have to play the likes of Loughborough and Leeds Met, so they will need the support.
“Men’s football 1sts nearly got promoted last season, so definitely watch out for them too, there’s big things coming for them.
“Also watch the Athletics club – we’re getting the new athletics track so I think we’re going to get some really good athletes coming to York in the next couple of years.”
This year marks the first season of a new deal with kit provided Kukri, who replace Surridge.
“It’s the first year, so I’m hoping they’re looking to impress us and do a really good job. We had a lot of problems with Surridge and we chose Kukri because of their good reputation for on time delivery and quality.”
The Kukri deal was confirmed before the summer, but Brown has also been working on some of her own manifesto pledges.
The most controversial of these was her pledge to work towards hiring an in-house physio.
“A lot of people twisted what I meant sometimes and took what I said to mean I am going to get an in-house physio in my first week as President.
“Obviously that’s stupid – what I meant was, in terms of the strategy that the university and union have together, I want physiotherapy to be written into it. Keith Morris is behind it and we just need to look at funding opportunities, because they are out there.”
At first, her plan is to get a local physio to come in on a weekly basis, charging clubs very low rates. “We’re working on this – I can’t say it’s going to definitely happen this term. Clubs will have to work out a system as it’s going to be stupidly popular especially if it’s that cheap.”
“It’s about putting the small steps in now for the future. I couldn’t come into this job this year without thinking about it growing, which you have to.
“When there’s such a need for it, which there is right know, then you have to push for it, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
New sponsorship deals were also a big part of Brown’s plan. “Sponsorship drives sport, it really does. If you get sponsorship for a year, you can afford a coach, and coaches are what we need to keep improving performance.”
But sponsorship is not a straight-forward process, as she has soon found out.
“When you write your manifesto, you don’t see the limits and you don’t see it how you do after a couple of months experience and working with all the staff.”
She won’t be discouraged in pushing sponsorship deals for clubs, though.
“We’re working with Salvation at the minute, who have been very generous.
“We were also going to do a sponsorship event, which has unfortunately been cancelled for various reasons – we’re pushing that back to Christmas time.
“That would see potential local sponsors and bigger sponsors coming in for an evening event, a chance for networking and creating relationships for the future.”
It’s easy to forget that Brown is only a couple of months into her year term. Pledges can’t be put in place overnight. A number, though, are well on their way to being completed, such as training for club committee members on welfare and inclusivity.
“What we’re doing at the minute is called a Key Contacts scheme. It’s only ten clubs at the moment, but we want to make it look like an attractive thing so that next year, more clubs will come on board.
“These will be the main point of contact within the club for things like discrimination against LGBT students and disabled students.
“We’re going to publicise these key contacts, making it into a campaign and then clubs should see that and think ‘I want to do that’ because it will get them more members and make them more diverse.”
Participation is an important motivation for Brown and she was really excited about what they’ve already put in place to widen involvement in sport, at all levels.
“We have introduced college sport activators. They’re designed to increase participation in college sport, increasing awareness of it.
“There’s also the new disability sport activator, who is brilliant, she’s got great ideas on how to make clubs more disability friendly, and we have Emily [Hearle, participation manager] who is working harder than ever! So participation should keep going up.”
With a lot already planned for the year, Brown will be reliant on YUSU staff for support as well as her York Sport Committee, whom she expects to become very familiar with in the next year.
Brown has already been spending a lot of time with her fellow sabbatical officers, something which isn’t likely to change over the coming months.
“We’re quite a good team – Anna [McGivern, Activities Officer] is one of my besties now. I love them all! We do spend a lot of time together – so far it’s been very plain sailing, no arguments, we’ve all been getting on. We’ll be going out a lot this week together.”
The judgement on how successful Brown has been as York Sport President won’t come for a good few months, but the foundations are already in place for many of her plans.
Beyond the intention to win Roses, she has many other aims, both personal and professional.
“I want to be never nervous when public speaking again! That would be really great.
“I’d love to look back and see York Sport Union as a fairer union, in the sense of providing clubs with equal time and attention.
“I want to be able to have made some clear progress with physio and general injury prevention. This needs to happen – I’ll be pushing for that.
“I’m hoping that clubs will be more diverse and more accessible. I’d like us to have more money and more funding opportunities, and I want clubs to be happy and finish the year thinking I did a good job and did the best I could for them.”