Lizzy Rees
News
Finding the Target: How a BSU employee is empowering community and aiming for gold
Friday, 15 August, 2025Bath Spa University is home to a community of talented and passionate staff members, all of whom help to shape the University on a day-to-day basis.
Some, however, aren’t just making their mark during the working day, with hidden talents and fascinating stories helping to shape the lives of those who make BSU what it is.
One such story can be found in the University’s Centre for Innovation and Knowledge Exchange, with Bath Social Impact Network (BSIN) Manager Lizzy Rees pulling back the curtain on her community impact, and time as a world champion field archer.
Joining BSU at the start of 2025, Lizzy spent most of her career prior working in the charity sector, empowering community engagement and creating accessible pathways for young people.
It’s her archery career, however, that ties the knot between the then and now, with Lizzy’s arrival at BSU providing the platform to return to a field that she collected a World Championship title for in 2012.
“I first shot when I was four years old and shot for GB for the first time at the age of 14. I took a long break after 10 years but started shooting again during 2024 and, within six months, I’ve qualified to shoot for GB again.”
Lizzy’s discipline, Field Archery, is different to that seen in competitions like the Olympic Games. A more varied approach, Field Archery is about challenging the archer in a range of terrains and distances, with competitors shooting up and down landscapes and at different sized targets from both known and unknown distances.
Lizzy herself reflects on times shooting around mountains in Italy, picturesque lakes and unique quarries:
“People get creative with the course designs. The best I’ve seen is on a forklift! It’s more urbanised now to make it easier to televise but it’s a really unique sport with a great sense of community within it.”
As an elite-level sportswoman, Lizzy is tasked with combining her skill with her day-to-day job at BSU. Reflecting on the challenges of this, Lizzy said:
“It’s very important to be in a good headspace and have a job that is both flexible and has a great culture. I always say that archery in 95% psychological. It’s easy to be good, but it’s difficult to be exceptional.
I struggled a lot psychologically eight years ago when I took my break, I got nervous and I didn’t enjoy shooting. Now, I’m working with a sports psychologist, which has really helped me, and my current role at BSU has been like an aligning of the stars. It’s a job, community and culture that is so positive. Compared to any job I’ve had in the past decade, this BSU role allows me to have the headspace to perform better. I come into work, and I look forward to it every day. I’m not drained or knackered at the end of the day, I’m ready to go and train at my best level.”
Indeed, her day job as BSIN Manager sees the transfer of many of the skills learnt in the archery field, with Lizzy’s remit being to create a positive and collaborative community amongst businesses in the local area.
Speaking about the impact of BSIN, Lizzy said:
“BSIN is a business network for any organisation in BANES (Bath and North East Somerset Council) that wants to have a positive impact. We talk to different organisations, understand their challenges and work out different ways to solve them, whether through the network itself or through expertise from across the University.
It’s about bringing BSU to the people and making the University feel as accessible as possible. It’s not just an institution for 18–25-year-olds, it can be a space for anyone.”
A sense of community and keen awareness of the importance of looking after oneself has been apparent through Lizzy’s educational and professional life, with her dissertation reflecting on how personal life issues can impact a person’s ability to perform under pressure.
The lessons learnt in Lizzy’s break from archery serve as a reminder of the power of the human mind, with Lizzy overcoming mental barriers to once again compete to become the best in the world.
Reflecting on this, Lizzy had an important message for all BSU students:
“I think it’s really important to be kind to yourself. My archery career has been a massive roller coaster and sometimes you just have to go with it and not worry too much. You will have really good days and really bad days and that’s okay. The bad stuff fades into the distance eventually, just keep focussing on the good.”
Lizzy will be competing for Great Britain again at the European 3D Championships, Serbia, at the beginning of October. You can follow her archery journey closely on the Archery GB website and Lizzy's Archery Instagram.