University of Nottingham Sport scholar Hollie Lumsden recently achieved great success by winning her first international gold medal at January's Malaga Grand Prix. After winning the mixed junior category and returning to Nottingham, we spoke to Hollie about the achievement as well as her time as a first year Aerospace Engineering student in the Faculty of Engineering here at the university.
We'll start from the beginning – how did you get into the sport? It’s not one that everyone goes into.
It’s more of a family thing. My mum shot for England and my Dad does game shooting, so both my parents are involved in clay sports and shooting generally. I think my grandad was initially the one who got into it on a corporate try-out day, who got my mum into it. Then I grew up round the shooting ground and at the weekend I used to go see my granddad and help him out. There’s a button you press to release the traps and I used to do that when I was young, just to kind of help out. When I was nine years old, my grandad said – “You’ve got to try it now, you’ve got to try.” So I tried, and I’ve been shooting for ten years now.
For the first five years, I did a discipline called sporting, which is similar to game shooting. This is like all different angles, targets, everything. And then I went to a British shooting try-out day to try the Olympic disciplines when I was about 14. My mum shot skeet, which is one of the disciplines, so obviously I didn’t want to do that. I shoot Olympic trap, and I was terrible at it, but I fell in love with it because I was so terrible at it!
So, do you feel any pressure at all or is it something you enjoy doing?
Obviously, there is pressure when you’re in a competition and you really want to do well, you put pressure on yourself. But at the end of the day, it’s something that I enjoy doing. For me, obviously, being a dual career athlete, my career will come first I think. This is something I want to take to Olympic level, and I work really hard to make both my sport and career work, but at the end of the day I do try to keep it as something I enjoy.
So you have recently been travelling for certain competitions – how has that gone?
Yes, it’s been good! Last year was my first international year. I did a lot of travelling and it was all very new. The season normally starts around April but the Malaga Grand Prix is the first of the year and it’s always really early. Malaga’s normally the first qualifier, and it counts as the first GB qualifying as well which is why we all go out there. This year I managed to qualify in 4th place for the semi-finals out of 8 spots available and then came 2nd in my semi-final so progressed to the final where I went on to win the gold! I’m super happy and it’s meant quite a good start to the season.
I want this year to be a good year for me in internationals and going out and winning gold in Spain was the best start you could possibly imagine. Usually for juniors – under 21’s - its separated between men and women, but for this competition they didn’t have enough time to turn both finals with the senior men and women so I was competing against all the men as well so it was really pleasing to come out on top against everyone!
So was the win a little bit unexpected then and possibly your best achievement to date?
It was a little bit unexpected – my qualifying didn’t go as well as I wanted. I qualified fourth out of fifteen of us which is still quite good but that isn’t how I wanted to perform score wise. I was behind throughout the semi finals and scraped into the final in last place and had to claw my way back up so it was a real fight! Going into the final I was a bit down and I was also the only female in the final so I was just taking it as it came. Going into the last ten targets, I shot eight out of eight, and the person in second shot five out of eight and at that point, they couldn’t win anymore, so I won on a golden hit – which is quite satisfying when that happens – you’re like “yes!”
In 2021, I was British champion which also meant that overall I was top ranked in the country. In 2022 I couldn’t match that unfortunately because the last competition I needed for rankings, I was out at the World Championship. I got the bronze at Junior World Cup last year in the mixed pairs with my friend Lucas Hyde, which was pretty amazing because it was both our first years internationally, so we were really happy with that.
It must give you a lot of confidence for the rest of the season?
The next competition domestically is around April and May, and I think the Junior World Cup is in June or July and selection for that cuts in March. The two majors that everyone wants to go to are the European and World championships. This year, there have been more world cups added, so normally there’s just the Junior world cup in Germany and that’s it, but now there’s two more – one Finland and one in Italy. So, they’re the three minor– still obviously big – ones which you can be selected for – so they’re the five this year I’m aiming to compete at now.
Was your plan always to go to university and put the academics first?
Yes it was always the plan. I mean obviously it would’ve been the dream to just leave school and go shoot, but that’s just financially not a plan. So enrolling at university alongside my career obviously helps to fund the shooting career at the same time, but I have chosen to study Aerospace Engineering which is a pretty hard degree too! However, it really is my way forward because I really enjoy it and it’s something that will interest me forever.
Is there any particular reason you chose Aerospace Engineering, or is it just something you were interested in?
My grandad was an engineer, so I think I probably was destined to be an engineer. He always used to say things like “You’re always such an engineer!” I originally wanted to go into astrophysics, so space and everything – that really interests me – until I did Physics A Level and I thought “I can’t do this as a degree(!),” and so I kind of mixed the two worlds together. It’s good! It is tricky and hard, but I am enjoying it.
As a first year, how have you found the adapting to university life?
I’ve really enjoyed it, and I’ve really fit right in. I quite like being busy, but also having that downtime where you can kind of control your time yourself is a great. However, there are days that are more structured which is great at times too.
What is a normal week in terms of balancing your academics with shooting?
Four days a week I am in lectures pretty much all day. Wednesdays we normally get off –unless we have labs but that's not often, so I usually shoot. Depending on what competitions are coming up, I'll shoot either trap or sporting. I’ll focus on the relevant discipline as they have both available at the ground we shoot at. When there’s competitions coming up, I’ll also do weekend training as well, so Saturday and Sundays at the grounds. With weekends that I’m not training I’ll be at the gym here on campus, and I have Jon as my coach and he knows that I have to work around my schedule and is really flexible.
Was your plan always to go to university and put the academics first?
Yes it was always the plan. I mean obviously it would’ve been the dream to just leave school and go shoot, but that’s just financially not a plan. So enrolling at university alongside my career obviously helps to fund the shooting career at the same time, but I have chosen to study Aerospace Engineering which is a pretty hard degree too! However, it really is my way forward because I really enjoy it and it’s something that will interest me forever.
What was it that made your mind up that you wanted to come to Nottingham?
I went to a couple of different university’s first and you just don’t get that feeling. I remember me and my Dad came to the open day here, parked on the downs and we got out the car and we were like “this is amazing.” I think it’s just how big and green campus is. I’m from the countryside and the other campuses we visited were more in the city and quite cramped, and I was a bit overwhelmed because it’s not the situation I’m used to. So, when I came here I thought this is a bit like home really, and then I went to the engineering side of campus and it’s huge! I was walking round and thinking ‘this is the size of some of the campuses I’ve been too - like the whole university!’ The course was/is everything I wanted, the campus and the feel of it was everything I wanted. Sport here is obviously huge here too, which is amazing – and that was another thing to add to it. It just kind of felt like home, and I thought I could live here for the next couple of years.
How have you settled in being on campus and generally being a sports scholar?
It’s good. Obviously balancing the course and sport is stressful at times because you’re thinking ‘I need to go to the gym, but I’ve got all this coursework to do.’ Sometimes it’s quite hard to fit it all in but being on campus is really easy as it’s a five minute walk from my halls to the sports centre so I can literally come here for half an hour and have my gym session done. All of my friends from my hall and course are all really supportive so when they’re going out, and I’ve got to stay up late doing coursework because I’m training tomorrow they’re all just supportive of it. It’s a nice feeling to have that extra support team behind you - obviously I’ve got the university, my family, and British shooting behind me but also having friends behind me just means a lot.
Looking further ahead, is there any particular area that you’re aiming to go forward with in terms of your course and career?
I would say the fields of space and astrophysics or military defence. Those are two areas which really interest me. I’m involved in the Mars rover project - one of the space soc projects where we are building a mars rover - and will be competing with it at Airbus Stevenage this year which is really cool. But military defence is also something that is also an interest to me. I’m so new to the course with it being my first year, so there are so many different things I am covering which I’ve never learned before so it is obviously quite a change. However those fields are what I am interested in, so doing something related to those industries would be something I would want to do with my life.
So in terms of your shooting, have you met many other people at the University?
There’s another shooter who got a scholarship – William Gilbert – and I went out to junior world cup with him last year so we’ve known each other for a while, but the shooting club are really nice people and I’ve felt quite at home with them. They’ve also been really supportive, especially with me shooting a slightly different discipline in trap. They’re a really good bunch of people and obviously we are trying to get more people into the sport.
What would you say to people thinking about taking up a new sport?
Just go for it! Shooting is perceived as quite a male dominated sport, and I think obviously I’ve been doing it for so long I’m just quite used to being the only girl in the room sometimes but I think quite a lot of people are scared about that. I think just go for it because if you’re enjoying it, it balances out the whole fear of not fitting in because if you’re good at it, everyone will see that. I have heard people say that because you’re a girl you can’t shoot - but you definitely can!
Do you see that changing?
It’s starting to change. There are lots of initiatives aiming to change it, with lots to get the gender and racial balance as well. Obviously it is quite perceived as a white male sport in the industry and we’re working really hard to get that stigma out. We just still need to get more people into the sport, even if it’s not clay shooting – there’s rifle, pistol - getting anyone into any of the sports would be amazing really.
Obviously, you’ve been here for a little while now - if you were to look back at yourself a year ago when you were thinking about university, what would you say to yourself knowing certain things you know about your course and university, and your shooting?
I think - just don’t be terrified. I was ready for the change; I was ready to come to University but I was also terrified just to meet more people and understanding how I was going to fit in because I do a slightly different sport. I thought everyone would see me as quite an uptight person not being able to go out because of my schedule and I was quite scared. I was really driven that this year I was going to try and take my sport really far and wanted to succeed, but that means that I wouldn’t be able to go out with friends and thought people might see me differently. I think I’d tell myself – “No, work hard, because this is what you want to do, and people will support you because they want you to succeed.” I think my advice to anyone who is thinking about a dual career and coming to the University of Nottingham would be to just go for it and work really hard because you will succeed and you will enjoy yourself at the same time!
Is that helped by the scholarship community, because obviously there is a large number of other scholars?
Yes - especially walking into that room on the scholarship induction day I thought there’s so many of us! I thought there’d be a few but I was like this is so cool! I enjoyed talking to different people about what sports they do because there’s so many different sports amongst the group. For some I thought I’ve never heard of this and it was so cool. I'm used to being in such an individual sport - and a niche sport really – so it was really nice to meet others in the same position.
We thank Hollie for her time and send her huge congratulations on her international victory. We also wish her the best of luck in her upcoming competitions, and look forward to seeing how Hollie continues to progress and achieve with both her shooting and academics over the next few years.
Find out more about performance sport and combining your studies with elite university sport at the University of Nottingham here.
Posted on Saturday 18th February 2023