By Brittany Burke

If you want to be a part of the lacrosse, rugby or hockey clubs at CCSU, you must be prepared to pay for the love of the game.

Club sports such as hockey, lacrosse and rugby are allocated budgets from the CCSU student governing body, the Student Government Association, and sometimes that budget is barely enough to cover the minimum club essentials.

Each year a club must put in a request to the SGA for the upcoming year’s budget. After a club makes its presentation members of the SGA decide how much money it will be allocated, but in the cases of the three club sports, the money allocated still isn’t enough. The large funding discrepancy forces the different members of the club to look elsewhere for funding, and most of the time the budget has to be made up in dues, fundraising and donations from family and friends.

“These parents for the hockey players, they’re already responsible for $1,500 right up front for the whole season,” said Kevin Leaver, the hockey club treasurer. “And if we don’t get the funding the parents end up paying more and more money and it gets to the point where the students or kids are asking their parents for even more money, not in the most ridiculous manner but kind of like a real aggressive sales manager that’s really irritating.”

“They send out emails to their own family members saying ‘Here we would like another $50 donation here’ and then two weeks later ‘oh can you give us another $100 donation?’ It’s incredible all these students might as well end up graduating and going into sales force because they’re trying to get so much money from their own family and friends,” said Leaver.

The hockey club has the most extreme case, requiring a budget close to $85,000 for the entire season, the majority of which goes to renting the actual ice time. For the 2010 season the team was allocated $5,000 from the SGA, requiring them to raise the additional $80,000 by themselves.

The lacrosse club is facing a similar situation. The team requires $20,000 at the very least to conduct a successful season, but the SGA was only able to allocate $4,000. The expenses that make up the team’s estimated initial budget are fixed numbers, including $6,000 for a coach. Like the hockey club, lacrosse must also work to raise the additional funds.

“Pretty much every year for the past few years we’ve gotten between $7,000 and $9,000 from the SGA, and that’s reasonable,” said Lacrosse President Greg Lokitis. “What’s unreasonable is we ask for about, like, 20 grand and we try to tell and show them as much as possible how important it is that we need this 20 grand for specific things like coaching, like league dues because we pay $3,000 to play in the league. Buses, referees, these are all set numbers that we can’t change and when we ask for $20,000 if we don’t get 20 grand from the school then the players make it up in their dues and every year that’s been increasing and increasing.”

Club rugby was allocated $5,400 at the beginning of the semester, which is enough to get by, but team President Chris Pritchard has also commented on how difficult it is to get money to make up for the budget gaps created by a low budget. This season was the first time the rugby club has had to do fundraising, but it won’t be the last.

The rugby club hosted a car smash, a fundraiser which allows students to pay to demolish an old car, which raised $140 and awareness for the team. While Pritchard realizes not a lot can be done with a small sum of money, any amount helps, especially when team members are struggling to pay their yearly dues.

“Some of the guys can’t even pay $30 for dues, so it’s definitely tough to get money on campus from other college kids,” said Pritchard.

All three club sports are required to pay dues to a governing body. Rugby must pay dues toward the rugby union and USA Rugby, which is $650, and $30 a player. Lacrosse pays to be a member of the Men’s Collegiate Lacrosse League, while the hockey club is a member of the American Collegiate Hockey Association and Super East Collegiate Hockey League.

While dues for rugby remain under $50, members of the lacrosse team can pay upward of $700, and incoming members of the hockey team are required to pay close to $1,500.

“A lot of guys on the team, if the parents aren’t paying for it they are and a lot of the guys are,” said Lokitis. “I expect a $150 deposit, like a down payment on the dues because we’re not gonna ask for $600 all at once and a lot of these guys are only giving me $50 at a time because a lot of the guys are going to school and going to work and on top of it going to practice so they’re real real busy. It really goes back to money.”

The recession is making it more difficult to raise funds on campus because the majority of college students are struggling, and if it’s not the athletes who are paying it’s the parents.

“If it’s not the students its gonna be the parents who are struggling it’s a terrible loss right now with the economy it puts such a damper on what we’re trying to accomplish because funds are so low,” said Leaver.

The initial budget for the hockey club only covers regular season play,  it does not include the money needed if the team were to make the SECHL tournament, the ACHA nationals in San Jose or two game series at Florida Gulf Coast. With each tournament made the team has to try and raise even more money, which gets increasingly tougher.

The lacrosse club faces the same difficulties. After winning its division in 2008 the team had to abstain from going to the MCLA tournament in Colorado because the team wouldn’t have been able to raise $25,000 in a week’s time.

Like the rugby club, both lacrosse and hockey have resorted to fundraising. The hockey team was able to raise $2,080 with an Outback Steakhouse fundraiser, selling $20 lunch tickets, 75 percent of which goes to the team. In January the team is also planning to host a breakfast fundraiser at Applebees where the team becomes the servers, in addition to the weekly 50/50 raffle.

The lacrosse team sells shirts that say “CCSU Lacrosse Club” to friends and family, for an estimated profit of $900, while also planning an Outback Steakhouse fundraiser similar to the hockey club’s. The team is also working with parents of the team members to display business banners at home games for $500.

With the budget cutbacks and the way the economy is the teams will have to continue to not only worry about practices and advancing in the respective leagues, but also how to survive financially.

“I wish they [SGA] would give us a little bit more money,” said Lokitis. “It would make it a little easier on us and we’d be able to focus on practice and winning games…I’d be able to focus on being a captain rather than being ‘Hey get your dues in. Where’s your money? I need you to pay me so we can order these jerseys.”