Ollie Stevenson
The opening of the David Ross Sports Village in the summer of 2016 marked a turning point in UoN’s sporting trajectory. The £40 million, 16,500 square metre facility is home to the largest university sports hall in the country and the only all-glass squash court across any university and has since attracted not only elite athletes to the university, but also GB’s American Football and the Nottingham Forest Netball team.
A decade on, the evidence suggests the DRSV was not merely necessary, but catalytic, fundamentally altering UoN Sport’s competitive ceiling.
Outgrowing the Old Model
Nottingham has always been a strong sporting university, with sport being a core part of university life. In 2013 UoN found itself on 2,350 BUCS points, and by 2015 that figure had broken 3,000. Growth averaged around 300-400 points a season, which was consistent but nothing transformative. Nottingham was talented, but structurally capped.
Notts had talent, they always did. Strong first teams’ and a credible scholarship programme encourages reams of highly skilled athletes through the door each year. It was the infrastructure that was holding Notts back from breaking records.
Facilities were smaller and more dispersed, and performance training spaces were limited. Strength and conditioning provision lacked the integrated capacity seen at institutions that had fully embedded elite sport within their wider strategy. There was no consolidated high-performance environment which was capable of testing, strength and conditioning (S&C), sprint work and competition preparation all under one roof.
As BUCS & International Competitions Coordinator Lynn Turnton recalls, before David Ross, Nottingham was “always strong because of the students” but lacked the integrated high-performance environment that institutions like Loughborough had already embedded.
“We had the athletes. We had the enthusiasm. But everything was spread out. You didn’t have testing, S&C, physio and prep in one space.”
For her, the post-2016 shift was not cosmetic, but structural. “Since this facility opened, you can see a shift. It professionalised what we do – whilst still retaining that student focus.
By the mid-2010s, the university sporting landscape shifted to largely infrastructure-led institutions. Universities like Loughborough had embedded themselves within the national performance centres, playing host to both the National Cricket Performance Centre, and the LTA National Academy. To compete with these institutions, improved infrastructure was no longer optional.
By contrast, Notts were strong because of their athlete and coaching quality, rather than any specific structural advantage.
Growing student numbers led to an increase in demand for less competitive intramural sport. The ‘IMS’ ecosystem led to the need for more pitches, more space, and more central coordination. Student participation and elite performance were competing for the same limited facility space and time.
These factors, combined with a healthy £10 million investment from UoN alumni and Carphone Warehouse founder David Ross, led to the decision to build a new, state of the art building, encompassing all UoN sport’s needs, with room to expand.
Has it delivered? What does £40 million get you?
Between 2013 and 2018 – the years immediately surrounding the opening of DRSV – Nottingham’s BUCS points rose from 2350 to just over 4200. That is about 370 a year, on par with what we’ve seen before. What has come since is certainly more interesting.
From 2018 onwards, the rate of acceleration drastically increases. By 2022, Notts has surpassed 6,400 BUCS points. By 2023 that figure approached 8,000. In 2025 we see the figure sit near 9,000 – nearly quadruple what the 2013 baseline figure is.
The rate of BUCS points increases drastically since the opening of the building
Whilst this shows correlation, the real evidence comes when comparing to other, similar sporting institutions:
Whilst all universities have seen growth, none have come close to Notts’ overall increase. Starting 5th in 2013, UoN have seen a 270% rise in BUCS points across the 2013-2025 period, compared to Durham’s 55%, Bath’s 45% and Birmingham’s 35%.
Pre 2018, Notts averaged around 380 BUCS points a year. Post-2018, that figure has increased to around 650 annually. Even when accounting for the 2020 pandemic dip, Notts’ rebound has been both clear and steep.
Correlation does not automatically imply causation. Coaching expansion, scholarship funding and athlete recruitment all play a vital role in the success of university sport. However, it is hard to separate the timing of David Ross Sports Village and the success of Notts’ BUCS seasons.
This metric itself has limits. As Club and Coach Development Manager Matt Nicholson notes, BUCS points can over reward volume over quality. A sport fielding ten mediocre teams will outscore a sport winning a national championship with one. “American football could be the best programme in the country, winning everything, but because of the format, they’ll never score the points that football does with ten teams”. Nottingham’s growth story is partly about fielding more teams across more sports. That breadth is deliberate, but it also means the points table rewards the model Nottingham has built, not just the quality of it.
Whilst it is easy to judge a Sports institution by the success of its flagship teams, it is also crucial to consider the impact of having quality depth and breadth of teams. Whilst success at the top is important, having seven teams all winning points in multiple sports, across both genders is where most of the points are won.
When Lynn first started at the university, Nottingham fielded just 56 BUCS teams. Today that number sits north of 150 teams across 74 clubs, including Korfball and Snooker. This breadth gives Notts a massive advantage in the BUCS tables, enabling them to gain points in sports where other universities cannot even compete.
This expansion is structural, more teams mean more fixtures, more depth, and crucially, more point accumulation across divisions.
This expansion has not come at the cost of support quality. Nicholson notes that S&C provision was delivered to between 30-38 sports last year – a figure he believes is one of the highest of any university in the country. “There is no closed door for any sport”. The breadth of the programme and the depth of its support infrastructure have grown in tandem.
Whilst the DRSV expanded capacity of elite sports, through the high-performance zones and specialised physiotherapy suites for elite athletes, it also allowed a much larger number of teams to train and play simultaneously. Not only this, but newer facilities allowed more sports to be played and practised.
BUCS points and results are not the only way of tracking the success of the David Ross Sports Village either. Beneath BUCS, Nottingham play host to one of the largest IMS sporting programmes in the country, with over 150 different football clubs alone competing across the facilities, ranging from highly competitive divisions to purely social play, designed to increase sport participation.
The sheer scale of the IMS set up allows for a smooth transition between social sports and elite ones. BUCS players are allowed to play IMS, and can inspire other non-BUCS players to take up their sport at the more competitive level.
Lynn agrees, “IMS is fundamental to what we offer. It’s our USP. A lot of universities focus on two or three sports and put all their effort there. We’ve always tried not to forget the others.”
That breadth had not gone unnoticed, as since 2018, UoN have been named Sports University of the Year on three separate occasions. This recognition is in part due to the scale and accessibility of the UoN sporting scene. In many ways, it is the strength of the IMS ecosystem, rather than just flagship success, that has underpinned these awards.
The David Ross Sports Village is crucial to the size of the programme, as it allows large volumes of different sports all to be played at once, improving the sporting experience for the whole spectrum of sporting abilities. Olympic quality athletes train next to society netball games, and this integration improves the sporting experience for everyone.
It is evident that the post 2018 acceleration is not down to a few elite athletes competing at the highest level. It’s down to massive point accumulations across the entire BUCS sporting spectrum. The DRSV functions less as a trophy machine and more as a capacity multiplier.
Competing With the Best: The Loughborough Factor
Whilst Nottingham has always been strong, there is one university which has won the BUCS trophy every single year since its conception 44 years ago:
Loughborough.
This dominance has become so consistent and expected that often it goes unexamined. Loughborough have long set the benchmark for university sport in the UK.
This graph compares BUCS points results from the past 13 years and shows project points hauls for the next decade
In 2013 it was not really a question of who the best sporting university in the UK was. Loughborough’s points dwarfed the entire competition, and Notts, while competitive, was never really a threat. However, post 2018, Notts have chipped away at this gap, breaking free from its peer groups of Bath, Durham and Edinburgh to occupy a very clear second place position.
As VP Sport Sami Glover notes, part of Loughborough’s enduring advantage lies in their dominance of points heavy sports, such as swimming and athletics, where infrastructure investment and national performance centres mean dominance is expected. These two categories alone account for 2,500 BUCS points every year. Loughborough’s structural advantage lies in points-dense Olympic sports, where they have national centre status which compounds their dominance.
Sami suggests “Those point-heavy sports – swimming, athletics – they make a difference. We don’t have an Olympic size pool. That ecosystem is different.”
DRSV is clearly a step in the right direction. UoN do not match the Olympic ecosystem which draws elite athletes to Loughborough, nor do they have the same number of national governing bodies, or an Olympic size track or pool.
Yet the gap has narrowed considerably. Sami notes that recent head-to-head results show Nottingham winning the majority is direct matchups across a wide range of sports, and it is in these contests where Nottingham’s growth is most meaningfully felt. Loughborough’s points advantage is increasingly built on structural dominance in a handful of Olympic disciplines rather than broad superiority across the board.
For years Loughborough’s dominance has been undisputed. Nottinghams trajectory does not end that dominance, but is has complicated it in a way that would have seemed unlikely a decade ago. The dynasty continues, but it is no longer uncontested.
DRSV did not dethrone Loughborough’s dynasty, but it brought Notts into the conversation.
Not a Forever Solution: Where do we go next?
For all the structural progress since 2016, the DRSV does not eliminate the broader constraints university sports faces, and some of those constraints are beginning to show.
Loughborough’s position at the top of the BUCS table is not one sustained by facilities alone. It reflects decades of investment, a concentration of points heavy sports such as athletics and swimming and national governing body partnerships that Nottingham is yet to replicate.
There are also practical constraints closer to home. Infrastructure of this size requires continued investment, and expansion is limited by both space and funding. “We’re getting close to capacity” Lynn admits. “Training space is the biggest pressure point.” The 3G pitches, often booked from early morning until late at night, illustrate the structural ceiling that success itself creates.
The 3G pitches, often booked from early morning until late at night, illustrates the structural ceiling that success creates.
The recent refurbishment of the fitness suite demonstrates continued institutional backing, yet maintaining this momentum over a longer period requires consistent financial commitment. Given the wider financial pressures facing higher education, sustained investment at this scale cannot be assumed indefinitely. Sport must compete with other university level priorities.
Additionally, Nottingham’s growth since 2018 have been underpinned by a careful balance between elite performance and broader participation. This balance is a strength, but also a vulnerability. If it were to shift too heavily in either direction, there is a real risk of undermining the very model that has driven UoN’s rise.
The DRSV has undoubtedly raised the ceiling of where UoN Sport can perform. However, whether that ceiling can continue to move will depend not only on infrastructure but on how effectively the UoN Sport team can manage the next phase of its development.
The Wider Reach of the DRSV
One of the less visible effects of the DRSV is its impact in attracting national sporting networks to the Uni. The incredible facilities the DRSV boasts allows it to host national championships, including the English National Badminton Championships and the English National Table Tennis Championships, as well as playing host to major squash events.
Hosting these events is significant, signalling to the broader sporting community that Notts has both the infrastructure quality and reputational credibility within governing bodies.
Hosting BUCS Big Wednesday, which Notts did for four consecutive years, proved incredibly transformative.
“All of a sudden, students understood what it was about. Before, BUCS was just something that happened somewhere else. Hosting it made it ours”
More significantly, the DRSV embedded Notts within elite performance pathways. Notts Forest Netball, GB American Football, British Weightlifting and British Wheelchair Basketball have all used the performance facilities. The university can now operate as a Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme (TASS) delivery site, being able to offer all manner of support to athletes, including nutrition and performance psychology.
This raises internal standards and blurs the boundaries between university competition and national performance, as students train in an environment where elite sport is visible.
Simultaneously, the building has become more than just a place where athletes train. As Sami Glover describes, Students study there between sessions. They referee IMS fixtures in their free time, train in the evening, and socialise with their peers in the café. For many this building has become a place where academic, athletic and social routine overlap.
This daily centrality is crucial, especially in the context of recruitment. On university open days, the DRSV is often one which helps shift perspective, helping new students realise that sport is embedded within University life, however its unique location, away from the main campus, means sport is a choice, and for many who are not sport inclined they often find this a relief compared to other sport focused Universities such as Loughborough. Glover mentions that it is one of the main factors that sells the University.
High-performance infrastructure strengthens recruitment. Stronger recruitment increases squad depth, which further drives results. Those results enhance reputation and attract further institutional backing.
This feedback loop has been visible since 2018. Nottingham’s growth has not spiked and plateaued, it has compounded. The £850,000 refurbishment of the fitness suite reflects that sustained investment logic.
A Decade on: What has changed?
Ten years after it opened, the David Ross Sports Village is no longer a new facility. It has successfully embedded itself in the centre of the universities sporting architecture, both structurally and culturally.
The data clearly indicates sustained progress, with BUCS trajectory accelerating rapidly, the University sits comfortably second in the BUCS rankings. Whilst that shift cannot be attributed entirely to Infrastructure developments, it is hard to separate the scale of performance growth from the increased capacity that the Sports Village has enabled.
Beyond just the league results, the DRSV has altered how sport operates on campus. Participation and performance are both centralised within one space. DRSV has hosted national championships and attracted elite training partnerships, allowing the university to function as a TASS delivery site, embedding UoN within broader performance pathways.
Simultaneously, its impact has been felt more quietly across the university. For many students, the DRSV is a “home”, not just where they train, but where they study, socialise, eat and spend much of their week. This daily presence helps reinforce sport as a visible, shared element of university life rather than a peripheral activity.
The university sport competitive landscape remains incredibly competitive, as other institutions invest. Structural differences at the top of the BUCS table still persist. Sustained sporting growth will depend largely on how effectively UoN sport balances elite ambition with the broad participation base that has underpinned its growth.
The past decade suggests that infrastructure can do more than just improve facilities – it can reshape expectations, culture and competitive ambition at a university level.
Ollie Stevenson
Featured image courtesy of Annalish Dutton.
