Grace Arlandson, a member of the Club Cycling Team and the Triathlon Team, Poses alone on the podium
[Photo by Nori Veit]
Club sports at the University of Denver have taken a massive hit since the inception of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2019. Whether they manifest as dwindling participation numbers, faulty turnover, or overall lack of awareness and advertising about club sports, COVID-19 impacts are frequent and significant.
Because of the severity of limitations on club sport practices and events that were able to take place between 2019-2021, the current demographic of club sports members are primarily seniors and first-years at DU. Such a growing disparity between ages exacerbates confusion within the organizational foundation of club sports teams: the mentor-mentee module is disrupted, creating confusion surrounding practices, competitions, and overarching expectations within the sport.
“I didn’t even know there was a club cycling team until the beginning of Spring Quarter,” reported Avery Theimann, a first-year at the University of Denver and an officer of the Alpine Club, the largest club on campus. “And I was looking for a way to get more into cycling. I got a bike as a graduation gift and it has been sitting outside all winter!”
Such sentiments are not uncommon among University of Denver students, and allude to the broad extent of COVID-19’s detriments on campus. With, seemingly, the exception of DU’s Alpine Club, club sports such as Figure Skating, Ultimate Frisbee, and Cycling have experienced dwindling participation numbers on a massive scale.
“Because our seniors are leaving, Olivia and I will be the only officers on the Club Frisbee team next year, and we have to figure out how to run things smoothly before they leave.” Stated the Frisbee team’s secretary, Charlotte Marboe, at the most recent club sports meeting.
An outdoor sports club that leads camping, hiking, mountain biking, climbing, and backpacking trips for University of Denver students seeking to be connected to the outdoors, the Alpine Club has experienced quite the opposite, however, of sports clubs generally across campus.
“We had to rent a bigger car for our Rim Rock day hike this past weekend because of the increase in interest,” said freshman Alpine Club officers Finn Soderstrom and Cat Malatesta. “Kids are simply stoked to be outdoors.”
Such conflicting reports of club sports participation shed light on the difference in advertising. Alpine club, being the largest club at the University of Denver, has accumulated the funds to provide students with merchandise items such as t-shirts and water bottles, a seemingly insignificant form of advertising that has been wildly successful at raising awareness for club events on campus. “Students love being a part of something bigger than themselves, especially when it involves going on adventures outside.” says Malatesta.
Contrastingly, other club sports on campus, such as Club Cycling, rely on word of mouth as their principle form of advertising. Because of the nearly three years that club sports significantly lacked participants and events, students were not made aware of club competitions and ongoing events through both social media and word of mouth.
John Collins, president of DU Club Cycling, gave additional insight into the faults in the Club Cycling administrating as a result of COVID.
“Amy Rask, the student programs manager in 2019, knew everything. She had club sports down to a tee. Everything was running really smoothly. When was laid off because of COVID, club sports had no administration for the 2020-2021 school year. Until the election of the new student programs manager in fall 2021, there was no administrative voice in club sports at all.” This insight, given by Collins, provides a significantly more comprehensive explanation of the detriments caused by the pandemic.
With no administrative director from 2019 to late 2021, the Club Sports Executive Council (CSEC) was responsible for the majority of the administrative decisions. This council usually serves as an aid to the student programs manager. Without the manager, however, this role fell entirely onto a group of students both utterly unprepared and ill-suited to fill this role.
Specific examples such as this serve to illustrate a larger, systemic issue that, if not resolved, will be catastrophic to the future of club sports.
MFJS Reporter Spring 2022 