There are many images of their son Matt that remain clear in the minds of Kevin and Julia James, capturing his focus and sheer determination as an ambitious young hammer thrower. One is particularly vivid.
It shows Matt on the grounds of Sedbergh School under lashing sleet: his hood up, but the athlete otherwise undisturbed by the conditions. “They were there training and it was a howling, horrible day,” Kevin says. “Everyone took shelter while this squall came over. But one lad was still out there…”
Matt’s dedication to the hammer was total and, as an athletics event is held this weekend in his memory, it is this aspect of his personality that his parents most want people to remember. Matt died by suicide on September 7, 2025, at the age of 26, his mental health having declined after knee injuries ended his dream of furthering his athletics career at college in the USA.
A year on from his passing, a charity hammer throw competition at the Sheepmount in Carlisle – where Matt nurtured his love of the sport and grew to excel at it – is being renamed in his honour. Long-serving Border Harriers Athletic Club coach John Little, whose late wife Lesley is traditionally remembered at the annual event, wanted this year’s competition also to bear Matt James’ name.
“We’re very honoured that John was willing to share that with us,” says Kevin of Saturday’s competition. “Truth be told, Matt would be utterly embarrassed. He was a modest character who wasn’t one for the spotlight, unless it was justified and earned.”
On Monday, the first anniversary of his death, Kevin and Julia will visit Matt’s grave in Carlisle Cemetery, where he was laid to rest in the family plot alongside Julia’s parents and grandparents. They did the same on his birthday recently.
Matt is remembered in other ways in the community, including a rowan tree which was planted at William Howard School in Brampton two months after his death. A poem read at the planting ceremony ended with the words: “A gentle soul, a loyal friend, whose legacy will never end.” Many more tributes were paid to Matt, while thousands of pounds have since been raised for Every Life Matters, the Cumbrian suicide prevention and bereavement charity that helped Kevin and Julia.
In such ways, Matt’s legacy is preserved. Yet just as important, on this poignant weekend, is to remember how he lived. On a sunny day in the village of Hallbankgate, overlooked by the North Pennine hills, Kevin and Julia talk about their son: the gentle soul whose talent and single-mindedness defined so much of his life.
He was, his father says, a “happy, cheeky, fun little boy” who grew into a purposeful young athlete. “Post-puberty, he changed character and became far more serious. Athletics took over, and his focus was precise, driven and, where Matt was concerned, just quietly getting on with it.”
As a child, Matt was an able swimmer, something he shared with brother Paul and sister Emma. At secondary school, his friends saw a more outgoing side of his personality. Some remember a liking for snooker, a nickname of ‘Ronnie’ after Ronnie O’Sullivan and Matt’s impersonations of the commentator John Virgo: “Where’s the cue ball going…”
“It seems he was more the life and soul amongst his close-knit friends than we ever saw in him,” Kevin says. “At home, he was more reserved.” Online gaming, on the Xbox, was something else Matt shared with his friends, while he was a diligent student who excelled at geography. “His teacher, Mrs Robinson, said what a helpful lad he was, always lending a hand on trips,” says Julia.
Eventually, though, nothing was more central to his life than the hammer. Matt’s PE teacher at William Howard was Lenny Miller, father of Nick Miller, the future Commonwealth Games hammer champion and Olympic athlete from Scotby. Nick was also, for a time, dating Matt’s sister and would often visit the family home.
“When he first met Nick, Matt was still at primary school, and I think he was in awe of him,” Julia says. Further inspired by Lenny’s updates on Nick, and nurtured by John Little at Border Harriers, Matt developed into a strong hammer thrower. “It became his one focal point,” Kevin says. “It was everything. Matt saw the success Nick was getting, particularly with regard to going to college in America, and thought, ‘I’d like a bit of that’.
“As he progressed to secondary school, he worked out what he needed to do to get there, be that in academia, training and competitions. He built the plan in his mind.”
Matt’s family, friends and coaches marvelled at how the slim and slight boy turned into a “powerhouse” of a teenager. “Another of his nicknames at school was Thor,” smiles Julia. A story sister Emma told at his funeral recalled how, during a three-legged race at a school sports day, he simply picked up the friend struggling to keep pace and carried him all the way to the line.
He devoted himself to the gym and would typically be the first to arrive for hammer training and the last to leave the Sheepmount after the session.
“It was a steady, gradual thing,” says Julia of his development in the sport. “They started with the 3kg hammer at the younger stage and progressed through the weights. If he’d got 30 metres, I’d say, ‘Okay, I’ll give you 40 quid if you get 40 metres’. The others would do the same, egg each other on.”
Matt developed a close rapport with John Little and fellow Border Harriers athletes. “He enjoyed that close-knit circle, that group of like-minded friends,” Kevin says. “The training nights were the highlight of his week. It was never a case of us having to say, ‘Come on, Matty’. He would lead the show. It wasn’t a child being pushed into something they didn’t want to do. Quite the opposite.”
Matt was dedicated to the club as much as his personal goals, and his parents remember how he would muck in when, for instance, the 2015 Storm Desmond floods forced athletics away from the Sheepmount, and the hammer squad temporarily relocated to Sedbergh. Julia remembers one such trip in freezing winter conditions when they had to visit a hardware store for de-icing material to thaw the throwing circle. “We were all dancing about on it to get it melted,” Julia says. “He would just get on with it and plough through all that.”
His commitment brought success in several competitions, with the pinnacle coming in the summer of 2016, when he travelled to Grangemouth for the Scottish Under-20 Championships.
Whenever Julia watched her son compete, she would always shout, ‘Gan on, Matty lad!’ At Grangemouth, her vocal encouragement accompanied Matt’s most outstanding performance. Having just turned 17, he produced three consecutive personal bests to win the gold medal. His best throw of 58.48m secured the title.
“We’ve still got the homemade video of the ceremony,” Julia smiles. “There’s bagpipe music as they call the third- and second-placed boys forward – and then they announce the winner, ‘Matthew James’. You can see, in the way he strolls up to the podium, beaming, how proud he is.”
“Normally, he wasn’t demonstrative at all,” Kevin says. “He didn’t have a swagger.”
“He was probably thinking, ‘How great is this?’” Julia adds. “He must have been imagining throwing the hammer in America, and having expert coaching, and thinking how much further he could go. At home, he didn’t talk much about it. But we were chuffed for him.”
“Unfortunately I wasn’t there on the day – I think I must have been working – and in hindsight I wish I had been,” says Kevin. “We were elated. We knew by that stage he was looking to use it as a stepping stone to the ultimate goal of America, and it was all part of that progression. It was all working out really well for him.”
As Matt worked on his physique, he became known among his peers as a “driving force” in the school gym. He and his friends would encourage and challenge each other to attempt heavier weights. “Primarily it was to give him strength for hammer throwing, but he got so intensely focused on the weights,” Julia says. “I remember John Little saying to him, ‘Matt, you’re a hammer thrower, not a weightlifter’. But he just wanted to work as hard as he could.”
This helped Matt become a “giant of a young man,” as his parents recall – his stature so impressive that, when suits were required for formal events, they would have to be specially made or altered to accommodate his substantial shoulders. Yet Matt did not imagine that his prowess in the gym was causing hidden damage.
Knee pain, which he first experienced at the age of 16, gradually became more problematic. “At first we thought it wasn’t too bad,” Julia says. “But as time went on it got worse and worse, and you could see he was really hacked off with it.”
He was not one to wear his discomfort openly, but Matt’s frustration at having his training and competing impeded by his injuries eventually made intervention necessary. He underwent ultrasound treatment and other physiotherapy, without any improvement. Ultimately it was concluded that surgery was required.
At 17, Matt underwent procedures on both his knees, as medical results confirmed he was suffering from tendonitis, believed to be linked to the intensity of his weight training. “As he recuperated, it became pretty obvious that it was never going to be right, or at least good enough for him to reach the goal he had in mind,” Julia says.
“The consultant eventually said, ‘You need a different hobby’,” adds Kevin. “That was the brutal end. From that moment on, Matt knew. And everything that followed stemmed from that.”
Matt’s parents say that he had been so consumed by his ambitions in the hammer and his dream of America that he struggled profoundly to see an alternative path. He had not considered a Plan B of any description. His parents believe this was when his decline began.
“We tried to encourage him to go back down the Sheepmount, and just do it for fun, but he wouldn’t,” Julia says. “It was all or nothing. You couldn’t force him. He was his own man. He tried to carry on with things, he worked in the gym at school, and went about his life. But as the years went on, he became more and more isolated, lost contact with friends, and would never want to join in with anything. He wasn’t a social person at heart, and it wasn’t his comfort zone.”
“He would still play games on the Xbox,” adds Kevin, “and up until about the age of 21 or 22, you’d hear him playing online with his friends, with broad language and laughter coming from his room. But that came to an end. It slowly drifted apart as his friends went elsewhere in life. Playing those games became quite solitary.”
Matt had achieved excellent results in his A-Levels but had not been able to foresee a future at university. Nothing appealed to him as much as the hammer and America had, even though he had developed other skills with his trademark determination and diligence.
Away from athletics, the same patience and application showed themselves in practical work. He was particularly adept at repairing cars and motorcycles. “The skills he developed went beyond most DIY abilities,” Kevin says. “He would study, look things up, research properly, buy the specialist tools and get on with jobs that most people, even reasonably mechanically competent people, would not have attempted.
“He would come to me in the early days of fixing his car and his bike, and with my background as an engineer, I would give him a pointer, and show him how to use the tools to do what he wanted. But he took it way beyond my auto-mechanical abilities. His own initiative was so strong.”
Matt also did gardening work, initially to help his grandparents, and later for others as a means of earning some extra cash. “He was a very obliging young man, very conscientious, and people trusted him,” Kevin says.
In hindsight, Kevin and Julia say, the signs that Matt was struggling are much clearer. “I did try to talk to him about how he felt, but he would completely shut down,” his mum says. “I’d say, ‘Matt, you look a bit down’, and he would just clam up.”
“Looking back, it was all so obvious,” adds Kevin. “Had we fully realised, we’d have intervened, done something.”
Over time, Matt appeared to find less joy in everyday life. He still found happiness in family moments, including the arrival of his brother Paul’s daughter, Evie, and the gentle nature of his sister Emma’s dog Bella. But he withdrew into himself more than his loved ones realised.
Kevin and Julia say nothing can compare with the pain they experienced when they lost their son. They feel able to talk about the period that followed.
“You never imagine you’re going to outlive a child, and to lose them in this manner…I don’t think there’s anything that can possibly be worse for parents,” Julia says.
“Once the initial horror and shock of it slightly diminishes, you just feel helpless. What can you do? Then we were put in touch with the Every Life Matters charity. Being honest, I hadn’t heard of them before, but a man from the charity came, offered counselling, and talked about what they do – with bereavement after suicide, and also prevention, trying to avoid another family suffering what we have.”
They soon concluded that donations made in Matt’s memory at his funeral would go to Every Life Matters. “As soon as we realised what this group did, it was an obvious choice,” Kevin says. “If people wanted to make donations on behalf of Matt, it would be guided towards that organisation.”
The charity offered them comfort at the worst time, they say, while the number of donations moved them. They came from old friends, fellow students, school colleagues and anonymous sources. “It’s so touching that so many people held him in such high regard, to give so generously,” Kevin says.
“Part of me feels guilty about what more we could have done,” Julia says. “But that’s the sad thing. People who are struggling are good at hiding it. Matt must have felt he couldn’t go on.
“Every Life Matters go into schools and universities, and talk to young people about mental health, about the importance of reaching out. It’s so easy to feel ashamed, and not want to say you’re struggling. We thought that if it can help even one family not to go through this, then it was worth doing. There’s nothing else you really can do, other than try to prevent it happening again.”
Julia says it was “quite overwhelming” when William Howard School contacted them about the idea to plant a tree for Matt in their memorial garden. About 50 people from the school were at the ceremony, which Kevin and Julia attended. “Somebody had made a poem, and it was really lovely,” Julia says. “We visited the tree on his birthday, July 20, and I will go up to see it occasionally if I’m in Brampton.
“It’s always a bittersweet feeling,” she adds, pausing briefly as she becomes tearful, “to realise how much everybody thought of him.”
John Little had long regretted that Matt’s athletics dream had been dashed, and was deeply saddened by his death. The coach had always regarded the young man highly and felt it appropriate that this year’s charity hammer throw should remember and celebrate him.
Whether people knew Matt or not, his parents hope an event carrying his name conveys a simple message. “Enjoy it, go for it,” Julia says. “‘Be The Best You Can Be’ is William Howard’s motto, and Matt really embodied that in how he approached pretty much everything – his hammer throwing, his academic study.”
“If you’ve got an ambition, go for it,” Kevin says. “Just take it as far as you can, aim high, and go for your dream. With regard to Matt, for those who did know him, remember him as he was. For those who didn’t, it’s just a name – but just keep some small element of his memory alive.”
Matt’s memory emerges in other little details about his life. Julia smiles when discussing his love of food. “If it was something he liked, he would devour it and be the first to finish. Steak, steak pies, traditional stuff.”
“And strawberries,” Kevin says.
“When we had big family dinners, we’d always have a great big bowl of strawberries,” Julia says. “He’d make a beeline for those. I used to bake loads of stuff for our village show, but this year I hesitated to do it, because this time we might be left with all this cake…”
Recently, one of Matt’s friends got married. At the ceremony, a group of his pals raised a glass to their absent friend, and also asked the family for permission to visit his grave. Julia urged them to send a photograph when they did so – and the resulting image showed them toasting Matt’s memory, bottles of beer aloft, in pouring rain.
It echoed the photo of Matt at his athletic peak, defying the wild conditions at Sedbergh. If that was a picture of his determination, other reminders remain at the family home in Hallbankgate. In the garage is a 23-year-old Aprilia racing motorcycle, which Matt had restored to a pristine state.
Kevin marvels at how his son learned to replace its suspension springs, renew its brakes and carry out other complex mechanical work until the bike looked as though it had just come from the factory. “He built the confidence to do it,” Kevin says. “When he became unstuck, he would work a way around it. It was part of his determination to do something and achieve something himself. That was Matt.”
Julia now drives Matt’s old Mini Cooper, another vehicle he had maintained with the same resolve. “It will be sad when it eventually has to go,” Kevin says.
Yet it will last much longer than it may have done, I suggest, because of Matt.
Kevin looks across at the gleaming car. “It will.”
To make a donation in Matt James’ memory, in support of Every Life Matters, visit https://matthew-thomas-james.muchloved.com/. Tributes to Matt can also be read on the same site.
For more information about Every Life Matters, visit https://www.every-life-matters.org.uk/, email info@every-life-matters.org.uk or call 07908537541.
If you have been affected by issues raised in this article, Samaritans can be contacted free, 24 hours a day, on 116 123, or visit samaritans.org.
The Lesley Little and Matthew James Memorial Hammer Competition at the Sheepmount in Carlisle on Saturday, September 5, will support both LIVErNORTH and Every Life Matters. Trophies will be presented in male and female under-16, under-18, under-20 and senior categories. A minimum donation of £5 is requested.
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