One of our Foundation Year students has been writing about her experiences covering Premier League matches as a disabled football fan.
Ellie Killick, like many UCFB students, aspires to be a sports journalist, and also lives for football, attending and writing about any event she can get to.
She suffers from Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) type 2, which affects the motor nerve cells in the spinal cord, meaning she is unable to walk, crawl, stand and eat.
Ellie said: “I don't let my condition hold me back from doing what I enjoy, including going regularly to watch my football team play, visiting my favourite places and spending time with my family and friends.”
Ellie studies BA (Hons) Multimedia Sports Journalism at our Wembley Campus, and continues to do many extra-curricular activities, such as helping with the social media at Silver Jubilee Park for the UCFB University Campus League.
Even away from university, she can be seen watching football at Silver Jubilee Park. Recently, she attended a Hendon FC match where she met David Beckham and his son Romeo.
This is in addition to travelling across the country, watching home and away games with her beloved Crystal Palace, and then writing match reports which she puts onto her website.
In the last few months, she has also written about attending other sporting events such as Ascot, London Lions basketball and getting a tour of Selhurst Park.
She attended Ascot as part of a careers event with UCFB back in November. While there, she met with graduate Cameron Brown, who is now a senior social media executive at marketing agency Square In The Air.
Now working in sports such as horse racing and Formula 1, he gave a talk at Ascot to the students visiting the racecourse. Ellie wrote about the day: “He finished his talk by saying ‘I get paid to watch sport’, which I found very motivating!”
To find out more about our undergraduate sports media-related degree options, click here.
