By Brittany Burke

At the end of last semester there had been talks amongst the Student Government Association of ways to separate and ultimately improve the way club sports are handled.

While still categorized as “clubs” team sports require different things than other organizations overseen by the SA/LD and SGA. Club sports need money to compete, pay membership fees to various leagues and pay for things like referees, coaches, facility fees and uniforms.

SGA Vice President Liz Braun had met with the club team presidents briefly toward the end of last term to get a feel of what they felt needed to get done to make their lives and the process they go through easier. Speaking with the clubs allowed the members working on this goal to outline specifically what they felt was best for both the SGA and the clubs.

Little progress was made over the summer, but now that school is back in session Braun has been able to pick things up right where she left off.

The biggest possibility of what can happen with club sports is they eventually get broken away from other clubs all together and form a club sports board. Braun has looked in to the way Media Board at CCSU is run and the way Southern Connecticut handles club sports since they did something similar.

“We want to research Southern because I think Southern did the exact same thing,” said Braun who is also working with Senator Chris Kyle. “They did a club sports board and we also want to research what happens with media board, like how they split away and what they did in order to do it and we kind of want to take that same path because that worked so well. Our next step after all of that is talking to the sports club presidents or captains.”

So far the idea of a club sports board is just talk, but Braun has already met with Scott Hazan to discuss the idea as well as Liz Urcinas in ReCentral who advises all club sports and sees just how strenuous the ordeal is.

The club sports board would be set up much like Media Board would. There would be representatives from each sport to speak on the team’s behalf as well as a few students not affiliated with any club and Hazan and Urcinas.

“What we’re looking to do is get a meeting with all the club sports presidents to kind of let them know what we’re thinking for the board,” said Urcinas. “Maybe there’d be five people on the board from club sports to represent the clubs, then there’s two anonymous people who have no affiliations with the clubs whatsoever and then Scott Hazan and I would be on the board as well.”

A separate governing board would also allow the club athletes to create their own by laws and give them a chance to know the other teams and see what they also go through.

“One thing we talked about was certainly creating a constitution,” said Urcinas. “Obviously once we have a board we’d be able to put together different by-laws and the board would meet with any problems [the teams] have, kind of put together different rules as far as what is a club sport and what are the guidelines for being a club sport. Maybe you have to be in a league or maybe you have to participate a certain number of competitions or do a certain number of community involvements.”

According to Urcinas, this board is just as important to build camaraderie amongst the teams as it is to help them.

For now this proposal is nothing but a suggestion, but it’s already come a long way.

“It’s definitely already taken huge steps forward,” said Braun. “The fact that I have somebody else to work with, the fact that other people are interested, is already a huge step for the senate because sometimes people talk about something and they never go further than talking about it at a senate meeting. So it’s cool that we’re actually meeting with people, it’s definitely a huge step.”