Varsity Club Extends Hand To Club Sports

The Harvard football program hosts golf tournaments and conference-wide dinners of upwards of $350 a head to raise money. The Harvard Rugby Football Club sells t-shirts and roses for Valentine's day.

Such discrepancies exist in part because the rugby club, like Harvard's other 28 club sports, has traditionally lacked organized fundraising support from the Department of Athletics because, unlike the football program, the team does not have varsity status. But the Harvard Varsity Club is looking to level the playing field, thanks to its Department of Athletics-sponsored Initiative that will lend more support to all 29 club sports.

Yet the initiative, which began at the beginning of the 2006-2007 academic year and calls on the Varsity Club to improve funding opportunities in addition to its overall support of club sports, has gone unnoticed by many club sport coaches and players, prompting the Varsity Club to more openly and publicly extend its helping hand come the fall.

The Varsity Club, a not-for-profit organization that is over 120 years old, serves as the primary fundraising liason for Harvard's 41 Division I varsity sports, compiling regular "Friends of" newsletters, organizing fundraising events, and processing gifts made to athletic programs.

The club’s objective is to offer the same help to club sports as it does to varsity sports, though early efforts haven't generated the expected response, said Varsity Club Executive Director Robert A. Glatz ’88.

“We set up an evening where we met with anyone from the club sports and sort of gave them a laundry list of what we do at the Varsity Club,” Glatz said. “I don’t think anyone has come back to us to say, ‘Gee, we really want you to help us run a golf program or start a newsletter.’”

While the Varsity Club helps streamline the process by which alumni donate to the sports they played while at Harvard, former Harvard Rugby Football Club coach Robert J. Karetsky—who hadn’t heard of the Varsity Club initiative before being contacted by The Crimson earlier this week—said that many club sports, including rugby, already have similarly supportive alumni networks that serve a similar role as the Varsity Club, “but in a less organized, less focused, and less official capacity.”

Karetsky said that even though rugby alumni groups have "typically been exceptionally, strongly supportive, financially or otherwise," he’s excited about the prospect of alumni support in a more arranged manner.

“It just gives that group that much more of an attachment to the university as a whole, which is psychologically, exceptionally important,” he said, adding that formal support makes it much easier to fundraise and seamlessly organize events.

And the Varsity Club’s involvement will extend beyond the realm of fundraising, according to Associate Director of Athletics Jeremy L. Gibson. The Athletic Department now permits club sports access to Harvard’s Common Grant Application, which allows student groups to apply to the College for project funding from a number of sources.

David C. Lipson ’08, one of the captains of the men’s Ultimate Frisbee team, said that part of the reason club sports rely so heavily on alumni is because of their niche nature. In addition to the nationally competitive club rugby team, club tennis, cycling, and skiing, there is a club equestrian team, a badminton team, and a jujutsu team.

He said that unlike varsity sports, which receive mostly monetary support from their alumni, club sports often receive more essential gifts, like jerseys.

Karetsky said that he’s happy to see his former team and other club sports getting more recognition, both within the Department of Athletics and the greater Harvard community.

“If they had greater recognition within the athletic department, they’d just be able to thrive at Harvard,” he said. “There are just a couple of sports out there that are kind of knocking on the door of acceptance from the university. Anything that’s sort of a step toward that, in semblance or reality, is great.”

—Staff writer Malcom A. Glenn can be reached at mglenn@fas.harvard.edu.