More Funding, More Fun

The UC’s recent decision not to fund club sports in its final grant package brought to light an unfortunate reality: Many Harvard club sports teams are severely underfunded. The Department of Athletics, not the Undergraduate Council, is responsible for ensuring that these important teams exist and succeed. While we applaud the UC for its past attempts to better a bad state of affairs, it ultimately falls to the Department of Athletics to adequately fund club sports.

Unless a club sport doesn’t need a coach, equipment, or travel—highly unlikely—it’s going to be short on funding. Currently, the Department of Athletics budgets $10,000-$15,000 a year, or about $400 per sport, for the 29 existing club teams. This figure is woefully insufficient; teams face costs that easily exceed $400. The men’s rugby team’s proposed budget just for its trip to the national rugby tournament, for example, is $42,000. The men’s ultimate Frisbee team’s annual budget is $19,580. $450, even augmented by up-to-$2000 handouts from the UC, clearly doesn’t come close to making ends meet.

In order to cover costs not paid for by the Department of Athletics or the UC, club sports teams are forced to apply for a grant from the already overtaxed UC student group grant fund, fundraise independently, or ask members to cover their own costs. Independent fundraising is rendered difficult by the club sports teams’ lack of affiliation with the Harvard Varsity Club, the organization that fundraises for Varsity sports. For individuals (especially those on financial aid), personal costs are prohibitively expensive. Assumptions that the members of “ritzy” teams like skiing and horseback riding are sufficiently moneyed to afford participation are often false. According to equestrian dressage captain Olivia A. Benowitz ’09, many team members “come from parts of the country where it’s not as expensive to ride horses. Since the beginning of this year, we have lost about 75 percent of our team because of costs.”

The Department of Athletics, which did not respond to requests for comment, devotes most of its attention and funding to varsity athletics. The many undergraduates who lack either the time or the skill to compete at a varsity level, but who nonetheless seek the benefits of being on a sports team—in the past, an estimated 900 students—may find it difficult to do so because of Harvard’s failure to foster a strong club sports program through adequate funding.

The status quo is lamentable because club sports play an important role in the undergraduate experience. Especially now, during Mental Health Awareness Month, Harvard should recognize that club sports provide an opportunity for undergraduate social interaction and a much-needed break from academic stress. Team members hail from different houses so teams can promote a campus-wide sense of community. Club sports also offer students exercise and the psychological benefits that accompany it; an August 2006 study in the journal “Stress & Health” found, in college students, a significant negative relationship between physical activity and self-reported anxiety. Were club sports teams better funded, and by extension, less expensive for individual participants, more students would join and benefit from them.

The Department of Athletics should address club sports’ funding problems both by enabling ties between club sports and the fundraising Varsity Club and by increasing club sports’ annual allowance. Dartmouth and Princeton’s club sports budgets both exceed $30,000; there is no reason why Harvard should not fund its program at the same level. The Department of Athletics must recognize these teams’ significant contributions to students’ physical and mental well-being, and should fund club sports accordingly.