As campaigning for Student Assembly positions reached its peak during the recent elections, the importance of club sports on campus became piercingly clear. Nearly every candidate listed working for the advancement of club sports as one of their main goals, hoping that doing so would garner support from the student body. With twenty-four club sports teams on campus, the demand for increased support for the teams by the administration is constant.
The issues facing the club sports are the same issues facing a multitude of student organizations. Each team struggles with funding, space for practice and time for practicing. The clubs compete mainly with varsity athletics for practicing space, but intramurals sometimes also cause conflicts.
As a rule, the varsity teams take precedence over the club teams. Although, this hierarchy logically makes sense -- varsity athletics bring far more prestige to the College and additional alumni contributions -- the members of the club teams still seek an improved situation. The teams often do not know when they will be able to practice as late as the day of because they have to wait for varsity sports to announce their schedule.
The late winter and early spring leads to increased conflicts. As both varsity and club teams prepare for their spring seasons, the weather often causes last minute schedule adjustments. If inclement conditions force the varsity teams to practice inside for the day, the clubs have no choice but to oblige and adjust their practice times.
To make matters worse, the varsity teams -- in a position of authority -- are in no rush to announce their schedules in advance and have shown little concern with the time they leave for club sports.
The situation at Leverone Field House during winter term serves as a prime example of conflicts for both space and time between varsity sports and their club counterparts. Varsity sports occupy the indoor practice area exclusively during the day and often at night, while club teams are forced to wait for e-mails from Steve Erickson, Director of Scheduling for Club Sports, alerting them to schedule openings.
Unable to promise time to individual teams this term, Erickson sends out emails to men's rugby, women's rugby, men's ultimate Frisbee and women's ultimate Frisbee. On multiple occasions, the four teams have claimed the available times on a first come, first served basis; whoever replied to Erickson's e-mails the fastest was rewarded with the time at the field house for the day.
With this system for organizing practices, the confusion sometimes resulted in two club teams practicing together. The four squads competing for time in Leverone during the winter often had to bump one another off as the squeeze became so tight that they could not afford to sacrifice any available time.
While the teams were still able to practice each week, the irregularity of the schedule caused problems with commitment.
Unlike varsity teams, club teams do not demand a certain number of hours each week from their players. Part of what makes club sports so popular on campus is that they are generated from the true joy of the game, not from a sense of commitment. However, when practices are scheduled at inconvenient times, it often causes the players to forgo vital training for more important commitments such as school work.
Men's rugby, for example, was often forced to practice after 10 p.m.
"Our practice schedule in the winter was extremely frustrating because it was always fluctuating and never set," Josh Ring '08, a member of the rugby club said. "Practices were always after 8:30 p.m. and often after 10 but on different days and even different places so that continual commitment was a difficult aspect to achieve from club members."
When they could not schedule time in Leverone, the club was limited to the tight confines of the second floor basketball courts of Alumni Gym. The space is far from optimal for rugby practice, and even then, the team shared it with dancing classes and fencing -- another club sport struggling for space.
Rich Denton '08 also expressed bitterness concerning scheduling.
"I go to the gym five days a week to stay fit in preparation for the season. It is increasingly difficult to keep up this regimen when I don't even know when practices are."
Another main problem facing clubs is trouble with funding. Each team gets limited money from school administrators, and it rarely meets the necessary requirements for their activities. Although the funds provided can be sufficient for regular season play, though not always, they often leave teams in trouble for the post season.
A statement released last year by the Dartmouth Chapter of the Ivy Council showed that an estimated $12,000 was provided annually for the postseason of all club teams. It costs 15 members of the ultimate Frisbee team $6,000 to go to the national tournament. Unable to give all the money to one or two teams, the administration has no choice but to leave the funding up to the players themselves.
The Ivy Council's statement proclaimed, "Money for the postseason is a large concern and some teams are forced to cut their respective seasons short or come up with all the funds themselves."
While they do not resort to hallway bake sales, many teams do fundraise. Often they do so through Official Recognized Friends Groups. These friends networks consist of alumni that are contacted for the purpose of donations. However, there are only nine Friends networks for all 24 teams, and many of them are for just one sport.
"The College gave us something like $3,000 for the entire spring season. That was supposed to cover the Ivy Tournament and Nationals, but $3,000 didn't even fully cover Ivies," former rugby captain Erik Richardson '05 commented. "Luckily, though, we had a lot of donations from alumni. This was very generous because if it hadn't happened, we would have had to pay our own way."
Not every club is as fortunate as men and women's rugby, which actually has a clubhouse set to open in the fall, and many teams do struggle to provide sufficient funds.
Steps being taken to improve the situation of club teams include the aims of the Student Assembly and a recent pro-club sports rally held at Chi Gamma Epsilon fraternity. However, do not expect club teams to express content with their situation any time soon.
