I’ve lost count of how many times someone has said it to me.
Usually in final year, usually after a night out they weren’t invited to, usually with genuine regret in their voice.
I wish I would have joined a sports team like you.
It’s the kind of comment that sticks with you, and it’s part of why I spent the past year trying to understand how sense of belonging actually gets created in university sport teams – not in the abstract way it appears in university strategies, but in the real, messy, sometimes painful way it plays out for students at LJMU.
This research came from genuine care for mental health and from seeing what being part of a sports team can do for people.
The data is clear – sport participation is linked to better mental health outcomes, reduced loneliness, stronger social connections. But the data doesn’t tell you how it actually happens. What makes someone feel like they belong?
And what makes someone feel like they don’t?
The study
I worked with the voice team at John Moores Students’ Union, who collect yearly survey data on sport teams and belonging. They had the numbers. What they didn’t have was the stories behind those numbers. So I designed a qualitative study to fill that gap.
I recruited 19 members of LJMU sport teams – from cricket to American football, rowing to ultimate frisbee, individual sports and team sports, men and women, first years and postgrads, committee members and regular players.
I asked them to take photos over two weeks capturing moments when they felt a sense of belonging, and moments when they felt excluded. Then we sat down in focus groups and talked about what those photos meant to them.
The methodology is called photovoice, and it lets participants express things they might struggle to put into words – a lone punchbag, a team celebrating a goal, an empty seat on the coach. These images opened up conversations that a straightforward interview never would have.
What confirmed the research
Some of what emerged backed up previous studies. External competition – playing together against other universities – creates bonds.
Louis from the cricket team showed me a photo from a hard training session and said it captured “how hard they were working and togetherness.”
Kyle from ultimate frisbee talked about how “when you see your teammates putting in a lot of work you kind of respect each other.”
Social spaces away from competition matter hugely. Andrea from women’s cricket described going to the pub after training:
That’s how I have got closer to a lot of the players on the other teams in the club… I wouldn’t have a reason to speak to them otherwise.
The pub removes the hierarchy between teams. The so-called better players sit next to players from different squads. The competitive structure dissolves into something more human.
Long journeys and multi-day trips force connection. Tim from American football put it simply:
Being exposed to each other for four hours means you have to talk to each other.”
You can’t scroll through your phone and ignore teammates when you’re stuck on a coach to Newcastle. The enforced proximity does something that organised team-building exercises never quite manage.
Even just another member finding out your name, can have unforeseen impact. Being recognised after she was a late-comer in her first year, was the first step in belonging for Debbie.
And leadership roles deepen investment. Being captain, taking on committee responsibilities, having ownership over the club’s direction – all of this makes people feel more connected. Amanda described her year as rounders captain as “probably the most sense of belonging I have felt in a uni team.”
What I didn’t expect
There’s a phrase that kept coming up across the focus groups – “it’s only university sport.” At first I thought this was dismissive, students not taking their teams seriously. But the more I listened, the more I realised it’s actually a protection mechanism. Kyle, the ultimate frisbee captain, explained it:
So obviously it is university sport at the end of the day… you do kind of just come away of it when you do have a bad result and just thank God we’re here, we’re here for three years. You know what I mean? It’s not like it’s not not a career or nothing like that.”
The students who treat university sport with professional intensity – who “live and breathe” it, as one participant put it – actually made others feel excluded. Amanda described feeling isolated and panicking about her game when she stepped up to a more competitive team.
The “just university sport” framing allows people to participate without the stakes destroying their enjoyment. It’s not apathy. It’s a belonging strategy.
I also found a clear difference between how men and women experience internal competition – the battle for places within a team. Warner and Dixon’s research from 2011 suggested women were less likely to enjoy internal competition than men, and my data backed this up.
The competitive pressure that male participants described as motivating, female participants described as isolating. Amanda talked about teammates who were “that worried about winning” that it made her “just like panic” and feel “really isolated.”
This creates a problem I don’t have a neat answer to. Competitive sport requires both external competition – playing other universities – and internal competition – selecting who plays. If internal competition damages belonging for women more than men, what do we do about that? I can identify the tension, but I can’t resolve it.
Exclusion hits different
Research objective three was about exclusion – how people are made to feel they don’t belong. This was the hardest part to research, and the findings are the ones that stay with me.
Debbie, a former captain, described feeling so left out at training that she “literally just wanted to go home”:
No one was really talking to me. And I just honestly felt like quitting. I was just like, what’s the point? I don’t really want to do this anymore. And then I got into it, and then, you know, it became better.
That moment before it “became better” – that’s where we lose people. How many students had that same experience and didn’t push through? How many quietly stopped showing up?
Academic demands create structural exclusion, especially in later years. Tim, the master’s student, has missed every Wednesday game this year because of his course. He described watching teammates have experiences he can’t share as “bittersweet.” Andrea has felt more excluded as she’s moved up through her degree, with her workload crowding out time for the sport she loves.
And then there’s the preferential treatment – coaches picking friends over newer players, older members getting priority regardless of ability. Nick from handball described feeling “helpless” and “unwelcome.” Josh from badminton felt like “the odd one out” as one of the less talented players pushed to the side of training.
These aren’t dramatic moments of deliberate cruelty but small exclusions that accumulate – a name not learned, an invitation not extended, a new member left standing alone while everyone else pairs up for drills. The research shows that committee members and captains have massive influence over whether newcomers feel included, and most of them have never been trained to think about that responsibility.
The blind spot
I can only hear from people who stayed. That’s the limitation that bothers me most.
Every participant in my study was a current, active member of an LJMU sport team. They volunteered to take part because they care about their teams. The people whose experiences I most needed to understand – those who joined, felt excluded, and dropped out – aren’t in my data. They can’t be, because they’re gone.
I noted this in my limitations section, but I want to be honest about what it means. My research can tell you something about why those who stay, stay. It can tell you almost nothing about why those who leave, leave. And those are different questions with potentially very different answers.
There’s also a gender imbalance – only five of my nineteen participants were women. And this is just LJMU, one university with a strong sport culture and plenty of teams. Whether these findings transfer to smaller institutions with thinner provision, I can’t say.
What should change
I’ve put together recommendations for sport teams based on what I found. On the competitive side – train hard together, pick players on merit rather than friendship, balance competitive intensity with awareness that for some people this is supposed to be enjoyable.
On the social side – create time after training for informal socialising, plan trips and events that force extended time together, make sure committee members actively welcome new players.
But the single most actionable thing? Train committee members to treat belonging as their explicit responsibility.
Right now, whether a sports team creates belonging depends on whether that year’s committee happens to be good at it. Some are naturally welcoming, attentive to new members, and deliberate about creating opportunities for connection. Others aren’t. The difference has real consequences for whether people stay or leave, for whether they have a good university experience or a lonely one.
A brief module in committee training could make a real difference – explaining that belonging doesn’t happen automatically, that small actions like learning names and extending invitations matter disproportionately, that new members need active inclusion not passive tolerance. It wouldn’t cost much, could be delivered alongside existing safeguarding and finance training, and would address something my research shows clearly – that committee members often don’t realise how much power they have over other people’s experiences.
Beyond sport
The SU’s survey data shows that students who join sport teams feel a stronger sense of belonging to the university. Students who join extra-curricular activities are less likely to drop out. In an economic climate where every student who doesn’t return costs the university £9,250, belonging isn’t just a nice thing to talk about in strategies – it’s retention, it’s satisfaction scores, it’s reputation.
But more than that, it’s people. It’s Debbie standing at training wanting to go home. It’s Tim watching his teammates celebrate a win he wasn’t there for. It’s the students I’ll never be able to interview because they quietly gave up on sport teams and decided it wasn’t for them.
I started this research because people kept telling me they wished they’d joined a sports team. What I’ve learned is that joining isn’t enough. You can pay your membership fee, turn up to training, do all the right things, and still feel like you’re on the outside looking in.
Belonging isn’t automatic. It has to be created. And the people responsible for creating it – the captains, the committee members, the older players – often don’t realise that it’s their job.
That’s what I wish I’d known before I started. And I hope LJMU and JMSU continues to be a place where more and more students feel they belong.
