I am a New England country boy, born and bred. I grew up locally on a merino farm, 10km north-east of Uralla, with my parents and two younger siblings.The farm has been in the Bower family for six generations, with my younger brother now running operations.
I attended St Joseph’s Primary in Uralla and then O’Connor Catholic College for high school. After high school, I was accepted into UNE to study a Bachelor of Education (Primary) and lived at Earle Page College. I loved my time living in college at UNE and participated in many extra-curricular events before graduating in 2006.
After spending a year teaching at my alma mater, St Joseph’s Primary I decided to pursue an opportunity to play rugby union professionally, or if that wasn’t possible, I would use my experience in teaching to be a rugby coach.
I was offered a playing contract with Boyne RFC in Ireland. I also become a development coach with Leinster Rugby Union. I spent two years there before relocating to Berlin to play and coach in their National rugby competition.
After three years in Europe (and a few serious injuries), I faced the inevitable fact that I was not going to make a career from playing rugby and decided it was time to move back home to Australia.
I settled in Queensland to work with the Queensland Reds for the next five years. My area of focus was a new development opportunity at the time particularly with the youth girls rugby academy.
Amongst my first training session in Toowoomba were five touch footballers that wanted to give the new sport a go. Their names were Emilee Cherry, Georgina Friedrichs, Dominique Du Toit, Nikki Etheridge and Gemma Etheridge. People who know Rugby Sevens would know that all five went on to play for Australia, with Emilee and Gemma winning gold medals at the Rio Olympics.
After five years with the Reds, the New England life started calling again. When an opportunity to work in sport with SportUNE, an institution that was so helpful to me in my UNE days as a student presented itself, I immediately applied and the rest is history…
As General Manager, I look after SportUNE’s strategic direction, implementation of UNE partnerships and programs as well as the day to day management of facility operations. Recently I have been working quite a lot on the refurbishment of the SportUNE Pool and amenities, which I know everyone is excited to see happen.
Every day is different and I am given a lot of support from the UNELife Directors to explore opportunities in the sporting sector that will enrich the experience for SportUNE participants.
From this support, I have been able to apply my experience in rugby union to create a national women’s sevens team that competes in the Aon Uni 7s Series. UNE is the only regional university to be successful in participating in this elite completion and from this program we have developed four Wallaroos, one Australian Pearl and countless youth state and national players.
Another area that excites me is our UNE Sports Academy that has been developed for our aspiring student athletes here at UNE. It is a game changer program, driven by our High Performance Manager, Matt Pine. It supports our students with both training education, and academic support. It also gives us the opportunity to engage our elite online students and provide support and a connection with SportUNE. The number of elite athletes choosing UNE is forever growing due to the hard work of our staff in this area.
The sport and fitness industry is a very competitive and ever evolving environment. The trends in fitness are constantly changing and if you are too rigid in this area, you are left behind. It is an exciting challenge that we face in this area and how I work through it is by surrounding myself with a great team of sport loving staff.
My team are always on the look out for something that might be a game changer that we can implement for a better experience for our members.
SportUNE has over 2000 active members, and we have more than 250,000 visits to the centre each year. This is by far the largest active sport centre in Armidale, if not Northern NSW, but with that comes expectations that we are at the forefront of the sport experience in the region. I am very proud of my staff who are always up to the challenge of delivering a top experience for all.
Currently I am loving my time working for UNE Life as the SportUNE General Manager. My role and responsibilities have evolved so much from when I first started here four years ago, and I believe this is something that keeps me hungry in the role.
I have two points of advice. As a manager, never make someone do something you wouldn’t be willing to do yourself. My second one and probably most important advice is, always do what you say you’re going to do. Simple as that. Being reliable and dependable is paramount to building trust with others. Business is all about relationships, and without trust, the relationship doesn’t exist. If you model this behaviour, you’ll find that you will attract people you can count on.
