by Bryn Goodall
THERE are two days until the Women and Sport, Breaking Down Barriers Conference, being organised by Sports Journalism students from the University of South Wales.
As the name of the conference would suggest, it will focus on women in sport and aims to address issues they face and the hurdles they may have to climb on their way to ‘breaking through the barriers’.
The conference is being held at the University of South Wales Sport Park in Trefforest.
Among the high calibre speakers is Jayne Ludlow, the Wales Women’s first team manager who was recently named coach of the year at the Wales Sports Awards. She is the keynote speaker and will give an insight into her role, her rise through the sporting world and how she has overcome barriers and difficulties herself.
Rowland Phillips is the head coach of the Wales Women’s rugby team and will be another speaker at the conference. He will offer a valuable insight into what it is like for a male professional working in the female sporting world and the problems that women can face in their careers.
Other speakers for the day include Helen Ward, who is an international footballer for Wales and Watford, Christie Marie Williams who is a Welsh national weightlifter, Sky Sports and Cardiff Met media officer Abi Davies and USW Journalism student Rachel Jones.
Each guest speaker for the day offers a range of information and experience when it comes to women in sport and how ‘breaking barriers’ come about for women in the industry.
The guests attending the conference on the 16th January have mostly been secured by the students themselves. Most of the students have played a part in organising the conference, sourcing guests, researching relevant discussion topics and many of them will also feature on the day.
They will be working behind the scenes to report on the conference across social media and this website.
This is the second annual conference organised by BA Sports Journalism students. The course launched in 2017 and the inaugural conference was themed around mental health in sport.
Second year student Robert Jones had this to say about the conference: “With the experience we gained from last year’s conference, we have been able to understand how to improve on areas which we hadn’t focused on last year.
“Working as three separate groups, everyone has been given specific roles and tasks to carry out before the conference and on the day.
“Apart from the obvious differences in the conference from last year, this year’s aims of breaking barriers for women in sport and focusing on their accomplishments, working with the first year students we have been able to collaborate on a lot of different areas such as key speakers, social media coverage, researching and events.”
