The grey dawn light filters into your room on a Saturday morning. Your alarm goes off and you wrestle with the snooze button. You stumble around in the dim hues.
Pulling on your sport shorts you grab the duffle bag you packed last night. You have your cleats, Nalgene, ibuprofen, visor, jerseys, disc and polypropylene underwear in case it is cold today. You plod across campus, grabbing a bite at the Hop, the only place open at this hour, and wait for your ride. You are awake and ready to leave campus before 6:00 a.m. on this Saturday because, as a club ultimate player, on this Saturday, like most Saturdays, you have a tournament. As a club ultimate player you, like many club sports players, find that the college you love does little to facilitate playing the sport you live for.
To get to your tournaments you do not have a chartered bus, nor do you have vans. You pile into teammates' cars and drive hours to arrive a few minutes before your first game. At the tournament you do not have the luxury of staying in a hotel. Perhaps you have friends or family in the area who have extra floor space for some 20 or more people.
If you are lucky the host team will have a dorm lounge your team can occupy for the night.
Wherever you sleep, make sure you get a good night's rest. Tomorrow you have to finish the tournament -- and if you play well, you could get to the finals.
Back on campus you find that the college does little to help you organize practices or use facilities. In trying to get field space you find that intramural sports have preference over you. The athletic department will grant or revoke access to the field house minutes before practice. You will need to purchase your own cleats, uniform, shorts and everything else you need.
You better hope that you do not make it to the national competition because you will need to do a lot of fundraising to pay for your plane ticket and accommodations.
Why is it that Dartmouth College does so little to assist you and the hundreds of other club athletes on campus? Perhaps the program here at Dartmouth is too small to warrant much attention?
Dartmouth ultimate, however, boasts more than 100 players, much larger than many varsity sports, and is one of the largest club sports on campus.
Well, maybe the Dartmouth program is not of the caliber worthy of school funds? But despite a lack of resources, both the men's and women's teams have competed at the national competition in the last two years, and both of the Dartmouth teams are currently ranked in the top 25. Is it, then, because your sport is not a seriously competitive athletic event? But you find that there are 437 nationally ranked college teams in the country, and you spent ten hours a week at practice, two hours a week conditioning, and entire weekends at tournaments.
So, what are you to do? You work with Student Assembly to improve funds to club sports. You appeal to the alumni, explaining your sport and how the club sports program is an important part of campus life. You find yourself working on fundraising instead of practicing on the field.
You organize with other club sports like cycling, men's volleyball, water polo, rugby and figure skating who share similar athletic excellence despite the lack of resources. Meanwhile you are trying to organize practices, orchestrate transportation to tournaments, register rosters with the administration and trying to run a team.
You look at your jersey and see that it has the same "Dartmouth" that the varsity jerseys have, and yet the status of 950 varsity-haves and 898 club-have-nots on campus makes you wonder if you are really all playing for the same team.
