The journey to the BUCS Top 40

This is a huge success story not only for the University, but for Team Derby and the Union of Students who have both played an integral role in the development of Sport at Derby.

Alongside this achievement, the University has recently been awarded the Most Improved University of the Year and the Best Sportsman of the Year (Charlie Tanfield) at the BUCS Annual Awards Dinner. Both Team Derby and the Union of Students have high hopes for the coming year.

The steps we have taken to become a high achieving Sporting University
Our Sports Centre opened in 2015, allowing our clubs and talented athletes to access world-class facilities and achieve their full potential.

We also developed our sports scholarship programme to help individuals to pursue their sporting careers whilst achieving a high-level degree. All of our performance and development teams within Team Derby attend regular strength and conditioning sessions to help with their training and win those all-important BUCS points.

Stand-out successes include:

• Cycling scholar Charlie Tanfield won a gold medal for track team pursuit at the 2018 World Championships and is 2018 Commonwealth Games individual pursuit champion
• Games individual pursuit champion
• Archery scholar Philippa Taylor is National Senior Outdoor champion, International silver medal winner & BUCS Indoor Gold Medal winner
• We are ranked No.1 University in the country for Track Cycling
• Lyddia Chea and Kirby Ngan are BUCS 2018 Women’s Badminton Double Champions
• National Basketball League Division 4 champions – and promotion into Division 3
• Varsity winners (20-9) vs University of Northampton

What are Team Derby’s plans for the future?

Team Derby have high hopes for the future by ensuring we sustain the position of BUCS Top 40 with expectations to progress further. We are excited to see our Performance programme continue to develop and this will enable us to support more student-athletes competing at an international level. With such high success rates from our athletes, we are committed to investing more time into their training and personal development to help them achieve their full potential.

Word from Ollie Shearer (Head of Sport)

“I am delighted that we have achieved our plan! The Sports Management Group, chaired by our Deputy Chief Executive and Finance Director, Hari Punchihewa, created a vision, underpinned by a strategy and I have enjoyed leading an ambitious team to achieve this goal.

“I would like to say thank you to every student, staff member, sports president and our many partners for the commitment and support in delivering our shared objectives. Working in partnership with our Union of Students, we have delivered improved performances and an enhanced experience year on year from 104th to Top 40″.

Word from Connor Todd (Vice President Sport, Union of Students)

“The University, Team Derby and the Union have had the shared goal of being a Top 50 sporting institution for a number of years now, and the journey to finally reaching and exceeding this target to Top 40 has been a long one of continuous improvements.

“To be a part of the most successful sporting year at the University of Derby was amazing. To be the first officer to have managed to complete this manifesto point was a particularly incredible feeling. This was down to the hard work we put in as staff over the two departments, but most of the credit should be awarded to our students.

“Compared to previous years there seems to have been a large change in attitude when competing, it seems to have changed from a more social element to a more professional competitive environment. The performance sport package seems to have come on leaps and bounds this year, as well as the performance development package too, which has really helped us to rake in the points.

“I’m really proud to have been the elected representative of this wonderful group of students!”