Join the club
Joe Lore had a simple question.
With a list of 47 club sports for the 2004-2005 academic year at Syracuse University in front of him, the then-director of club sports wanted to know how more he could get added.
‘It seemed as though student interest in forming clubs had peaked,’ Lore said of three years ago.
It hadn’t.
Syracuse added three new clubs this year (Asian dance group, chess, kendo) to give the university its highest total ever at 57, and that number will most likely grow in the future, Lore said. Back in 2000-2001, Syracuse had 34 clubs.
‘Going back to 1984, when I started as club director we had 20 clubs,’ said Lore, now the director of the department of recreation services at Syracuse. ‘We had 20 clubs and a $12,000 budget. Now, we have 57 clubs and a $135,000 budget. It’s become bigger.’
New club sports are being added across the country, and the popularity of club sports is increasing across college campuses.
The University of Connecticut (UConn) has added eight clubs during the past two years, going from 31 club sports to 39. Ohio State University now offers 80 different clubs sports, the most in the history of club sports’ program. Pennsylvania State University also has a school-record of 62 club sports, several more than the previous year.
‘Our clubs have definitely gotten bigger,’ said Jason Halsey, director of sport clubs at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). ‘Competitive team sports have gained a lot of legitimacy in the past five to 10 years as well and have a lot of publicity, and kids see that and want to be a part of it in the same sense.’
A club sport is defined as a campus group that provides recreation, competition and/or instruction in sports-related activities, and the club must be registered within the department of recreation services, Lore said.
Syracuse offers club sports like baseball, chess, cricket, equestrian, handball, roller hockey, tennis, ultimate Frisbee and yoga. Lore said Syracuse ranks within the top five schools in the nation in terms of club sports available.
One of the biggest reasons behind the surge in addition of club sports is student interest.
‘I think it’s just a matter of student interest evolving and changing,’ said Scott Catucci, director of club sports at Syracuse. ‘Students find something that becomes interesting to them but also to other students at the university.’
The requirements needed to petition to become a club sport at Syracuse include proposing a brief overview of the activity, holding a meeting to gauge student interest, registering and identifying four officers and a faculty/staff advisor and following the rules and regulations of the Club Sport Handbook.
There can be a review by university risk managers and attorneys to evaluate the potential injury risk of the new club sport.
Students have noticed the ease of starting up their own club.
‘(At Syracuse) it’s a lot more smooth with a lot of trust in the students,’ said Samuel Rivier, a graduate physics student who helped form the kendo club at Syracuse this year. ‘I think that makes a much better environment for making it successful.’
Club sports have also been on the rise because of the different types of activities that can fit the requirements. Club sports allow for a wide range of activities and non-traditional forms of recreation that individuals may have never participated in before, such as underwater hockey, played in a pool with snorkeling gear.
‘The great thing about sports clubs is they are all driven by student interest, and I think students interests have become more varied so you see these different clubs popping up,’ Halsey, UNC club sports director, said. ‘The more especially television coverage that all the extreme sports or sort of non-traditional sports have gotten it creates interest right there as well as everything else.’
Unique sports also help launch distinctive clubs, said Kate Durant, the coordinator of club sports at UConn. The university added airsoft (similar to paintball but with plastic BBs) as a club this year, and Durant said having paintball as a club helped do so.
‘We’re national champions in paintball, and that has a huge following here,’ Durant said. ‘I think things like that give way to other clubs forming. I definitely foresee that’s how air soft came about. They say the publicity and how good the paintball team was and they threw it off that because they are similar.’
Durant also said club sports popularity stems from venue availability for athletes to continue doing the sport they played in high school on a competitive level, which can appeal to students.
She said club sports give students opportunities to pursue their passions on a collegiate level, but not a Division I level and can provide a more competition than intramurals.
Though in some cases, club sports even lead to competing on the Division I level. Durant said several players on the club soccer team at UConn were recruited to play for the varsity team.
Michael Skalak, graduate administrative associate for club sports at Ohio State University, said some wrestlers have started on the club wrestling team and walked onto the varsity program, and the coach has even told recruits that they should start off on the club level to see how they do.
But for those who don’t make the Division I level, club sports teams are often involved in organized competitive leagues. At Syracuse, Lore said the figure skating is part of The United States Figure Skating Association and the men’s ice hockey teams is part of the American Collegiate Hockey Association, among others.
Like many types of organizations on a college campus, there is a social aspect as well. Several of the directors commented on how club sports provide opportunities to meet new students and develop friendships while doing different types of recreations. Halsey said he’s heard numerous students saying one reason they stayed at their schools was because of friends they met through club sports.
The athletes and competitors agree.
‘I think it’s a pretty good system of meeting people,’ said Brendan O’Brien, a Syracuse wrestling club sophomore. ‘I met kids from different areas and different states, and it’s cool to talk to them about how life is where they are from and stuff like that, which I probably wouldn’t have been able to if I hadn’t been on the club team.’
No matter the reasons, popularity of clubs sports is increasing across the nation, as shown by the addition of numerous new clubs. With an already large number of 57 clubs at Syracuse, Lore said he would like to see that number increase.
‘More is better,’ Lore said. ‘We’re diversifying our offering to our students, and we’re reaching out to the students.’
Published on April 8, 2008 at 12:00 pm
