IMAS Series: Ella Sky
“Getting muddy. They always say I am happiest when I’m in the mud.”
As soon as Ella Sky started her first mixed ability rugby session at Yeovil Rugby Club, she knew it was the sport for her.
“The first session was mainly people from the women’s team that set up the mixed ability team, and me!” Ella explained.
“Now there is about 25 people that attend every week, and a total range of people. I’ve met loads of people who I wouldn’t have met otherwise, because we don’t go to the same places normally, but everyone comes together there.
“Because I was playing, my sister now plays as she joined the women’s team and mixed ability, which is good because we didn’t have a hobby that we did together before. We also have loads of women aged over 40 on our team who have never played rugby before, and most of them have never played a team sport before.
“We have a 15-minute warm-up where we are around in a circle throwing the ball to each other. If there are new people, we might shout out our names as a little bit of an introduction when we catch the ball. Then normally we do some handling skills, but it can totally vary.
“Men and women train together, but we separate when we do contact training. We are doing more contact now that we have got more women, which is good because that’s what I like to do. Sometimes during the session we’ll have a touch game or maybe semi-contact – because we aren’t allowed to beat up the boys!
“Because it was the women’s players who set it up, some of them play for mixed ability as well and they love it. They train for their team twice a week and train with us once a week and they say it’s the best training session; the best part of the week.”
Ella got into the sport after seeing an advert on Facebook in early 2020 that Yeovil Rugby Club were starting training for all abilities. Rugby was something Ella had always been interested in trying, but she had never had the opportunity before.
After COVID-19 scuppered her first year in the sport, Ella started playing regularly from 2022 and her commitment was rewarded in September, being called up to the first-ever women’s Mixed Ability Rugby Invitationals tour where she played in Spain with a variety of people from clubs across the country.
After her inspiring rugby story, Ella is now a trainer for International Mixed Ability Sports (IMAS).
“As an IMAS trainer we might go to sports clubs, or talk to them online and tell them what mixed ability is.
“We explain how the Bumble Bees were started – the first mixed ability contact rugby team in England – and we tell them what mixed ability is not, i.e. a disabled team or a short-term project. Mixed ability teams shouldn’t be a separate part of a club; and last season we got the Team of the Year award [at Yeovil].
“I did a webinar that was with many teachers, mainly sports teachers, speaking to them about mixed ability. This was good because I had an awful time at school and I was able to tell my story of what happened to me with sport at school, and how I wasn’t included at all and just left to one side because my brain doesn’t work very quickly.
“For teachers, it’s showing that all their students can do sport, and when we train health professionals it’s about enabling them to signpost people to things that are suitable for them.”
Ella recently wrote a feature for the IMAS website about how sport has benefitted her mental health, which coincided with finding out about her autism at 37 years old.
“There’s a lot of women like me who have been diagnosed in their 30s and 40s. I’ve got a couple of friends that have as well. It really improved my mental health as I found out who I was after 37 years; it opened up new doors for me, to be myself and not hide away because I thought there was something wrong with me.
“I learnt that I learn things differently, and lots of people at mixed ability learn things differently, and some people will never understand the rules and that’s fine because we just show them; it’s totally accepted in mixed ability. Sport is probably a lot more inclusive now than in the 1980s and ‘90s when I was younger, but there is still a lot to learn.
“Now I’m trying to swim properly. I’m not very good at it because I end up swallowing most of the pool. It’s also not mixed ability but the instructor is really good and because it’s a beginner’s class there are a lot of people who can’t swim at all.
“I probably wouldn’t have done the swimming class before because I thought I can’t do that. I couldn’t do any sports when I was at school and that’s why I never learnt how to swim properly, and I always thought sport wasn’t for me and it wasn’t for everyone.
“But sport is for everyone, I just didn’t know it.”
