Behind UJ’s sporting success
The University of Johannesburg's sports management played a pivotal role in obtaining three National University titles.
The university competed at the University Sport South Africa tournament hosted by the Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria.
At the tournament the UJ men’s rugby won the 2013 University Sport South Africa Rugby Champions title, the men’s hockey team for the second consecutive year won the Men’s Hockey Champions title and the squash team took the title for the men’s Squash Champions for the second consecutive year.
UJ clubs’ senior manager Adrian Carter said as a manager it was critical to come up with new strategic ideas to compete and win in the competitive university sports environment. “It’s a very complex environment due to the university sport changing and evolving daily,” added Carter who has been with UJ for more than four years.
According to Carter the university’s sport success was a result of team work from management to athletes. UJ sport management makes time for their coaches who dominate the country’s top coaching expertise. “I am extremely grateful to all our coaches who often do a great deal more in that they act as a mentor off the field to our student athletes.”
The key aspect of the university’s sport success is the importance of recruiting and implementing new competitive advantages in a sport code that is doing well. Codes with managers and coaches who are proactive and passionate will always compete on a sustainable basis which is very difficult to achieve.
The UJ sport’s academic support programme identifies where student athletes stand academically. If the student athletes are identified as at risk, appropriate intervention measures are instituted. The university is in the process of implementing the Academic Monitoring System which will be in operation as of 2014. “Through our proactive approach to support student athletes from an academic perspective we thereby ensure a higher pass rate,” added Carter.
This semester UJ sport plans to review and improve on the elite sports systems they have in place, and for summer sports codes to yield a title or two and be as successful as the winter sports.
