NSU Horizons Fall 2017

53 NSU HORIZONS Sheppard met Roderick, a high school volleyball player, in the Razor’s Edge leadership program. “She and I were missing our own sports. We wanted to be back on the court and in the water,” Sheppard said. They took their idea for a club sports program to Birch, a former club rugby player at the University of Connecticut. Birch embraced the idea. “I think they were a little taken aback at how ambitious Parker and I were, but we had come to them with a very detailed plan about what we wanted and how we were going to do it,” said Roderick, a junior biology major in the Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography. Birch researched club sports at other universities, large and small. One aspect was how to pay for the clubs, which required money for travel, uniforms, and competition. They developed a matching-fund- based system to assist the clubs operating during the academic year. “Of the seven or eight schools I talked with, no one had that model,” Birch said. “This model worked so perfectly for this school. If we were going to invest in them, they had to invest in themselves.” Birch drafted a handbook, which guided the four founding clubs (Equestrian, Swimming, Ultimate Frisbee, and Women’s Volleyball). For this second year, the Club Sports program has added Diving, Golf, Men’s and Women’s Soccer, Men’s and Women’s Tennis, Men’s Basket- ball, and Maasti, a cultural dance club. These clubs are completely student run. For a new club to be added, its members bring their ideas to the Club Sports office for approval. Roderick says Club Sports is a perfect fit between intramurals and collegiate sports. “Despite popular belief, intramural and club are very different. Club is pretty much all school year, while intramural sports only last about three weeks per sport,” said Roderick, who is from Acushnet, Massachusetts. “We wanted to give students something that they could The equestrian team, right, was one of the first to join the Club Sports program, which this year welcomed the Maasti, below, a fusion dance team that means “fun” in Hindi.