The Mark Ellis Blog

The World Transplant Games came to Newcastle/Gateshead and I was delighted to volunteer, both as a general volunteer plus as an athletics volunteer on the competition days at Gateshead Stadium. The Transplant Games is a special event and none more so as we know a Transplant athlete. That athlete is Louise McLellan and we first got to know her back in 2014 when she joined our training group. Now at the time, all Wor Bri (who coached us back then) told us was that we had to be careful as she'd had an operation. The bit we only found about following Louise appearing on GMTV in the build up to 2015 British Transplant Games, was that the operation had been a heart transplant ! So since then, Transplant sport has always been on our radar. F or the first three days of volunteering, I was based at Gateshead Stadium with the duties on the first day involving directing competitors and spectators at the Archery & Football competitions which was interesting, although the Archery wa...