Photo courtesy of Daniel johnson/The Carolinian
Daniel Johnson
Staff Writer
Who does not enjoy being a part of a club? For most students on campus, throughout childhood and up to a certain point in life, they have been members of some form of club, rather it be official or not.
The same can also be said about teams. A lot of people have been a part of a team that competes in some kind of competition which ends with a winner. Rather it be with sports, education, a form of art or with technology, basically everyone has competed against one another in school on some sort of level.
Last Monday, the heads of UNC-Greensboro’s respected Club Sports held an interest meeting in the EUC Auditorium for students who might be interested in joining an athletic club this semester. With 18 different clubs to choose from, and with diversity between the clubs ranging from bass fishing to equestrian sports, fencing and even quidditch, the turnout brought many intrigued students to a crowded auditorium.
After the meeting, some of the presidents and other cabinet members spoke about the important behind the scenes work that their organizations must do to maintain as a club. One common theme is the monetary input into the club to fund games and equipment. For these university clubs, they rely much on outside assistance from local community places to help fund for their teams. In a conversation with Mitchell Byers, co-president of the Swim Club, he talked about ways to raise money for his team.
“We had multiple events, like a fundraiser at East Coast Wings where every time someone buys something, we would get 10 percent of the profits,” Byers said. “We also tried to raise money [by doing] things like selling donuts and asking for donations.”
According to Allen Carpenter, secretary of the Bass Fishing Club, the organization also uses the local community to help raise money for the club. “We are partnering with some local business and plan to have some eat out nights” Carpenter said. “We are also partnering with a local company down in Lexington and they are helping us raise money and also logging SONAR for Inside Genesis, who are a depth finding company.”
When it comes to trying to recruit students to build up the club, the club themselves have to be able to market themselves throughout the university and be appealing enough not to scare away inexperienced students who might be interested. Christopher Reed, president of the Running Club, talks about how to deal with new students joining his club.
“Normally, seeing that it is long distance running, we will start them out slow” Reed explained. “If they have never attempted running before, we will start them out only for a quarter mile.”
Reed continued by saying, “What you do not want to do is take someone who has never ran before and thrown them into a 5K. If you do that, it will scare the hell out of them.”
Deborah Andrus, treasurer of the Volleyball Club, talks about how her team deals with new recruits. “With the volleyball club, everyone is coming in and doing what they love,” she said.“There is no drama or anything, we are very welcoming and everyone is just having fun.”
One of the underlying elements which each club sought to show at the meeting, which nearly all did, was present the passion that joining a club evokes for members.
All of these presidents, treasurers, secretaries and officials have started or joined their clubs for the love of it. Carpenter said that his sport is “a way of life” and that one lives and dies on what they do on the lake. Byers described his love for the water stating, “I started in high school and developed a strong passion and that is why I wanted to join the swim club here.”
For further information on any of the eighteen clubs on campus, go to the campus rec website.
Categories: Campus Sports, Sports
THE CAROLINIAN 
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