NSU Horizons Fall 2017

52 NSU HORIZONS A SPORTING T he images on the video screen told stories. Photographs of athletes swimming and playing volleyball illustrated tales of competition. Scenes of students laughing and singing on road trips spoke of camaraderie. All of the images shown at NSU’s inaugural Club Sports banquet emphasized growing bonds. “These pictures displayed a sense of family,” said Michael Birch, M.S., assistant director of Intramurals and Clubs Sports in NSU’s Office of Recreation and Wellness. “They also showed students who never would have met without these clubs. They represent what an impact these clubs make on the students’ college lives.” In just over a year, NSU’s fledgling Club Sports program has grown from 4 sports and 60 participants to 11 sports and 120 to 150 students, from numerous NSU colleges. “We thought maybe it would double,” said Marcela Sandigo, M.B.A., ACSM-CPT. It nearly tripled. Sandigo, associate director for programs in the Office of Recreation and Wellness, credits the birth of the Club Sports program to three people— Birch and NSU students Parker Sheppard and Macy Roderick. “Macy and I had this idea to start something we never had before,” said Sheppard, a senior exercise and sport science major in NSU’s Dr. Pallavi Patel College of Health Care Sciences. Sheppard, a swimmer in high school in his hometown of Mansfield, Texas, competed on the NSU collegiate team as a freshman, but he struggled. “This wasn’t the kind of level I wanted to be at,” he said. BY STEVE MCGRATH