When given the chance, club sport events are a sight to behold
You would be hard pressed to thumb through any university brochure without seeing at least one picture of the crowd at a varsity-sporting event.
Those events, however, aren’t the only athletic endeavors offered to students. Along with football, basketball and all the other varsity programs at the University of Idaho, many competitive club sports are offered to students.
Joshua Gamez
Take the men’s hockey club, for example. If someone walked into the Palouse Ice Rink when the team was practicing or playing in a rare Moscow home game, people wouldn’t think it was a “club sport.”
When people think of clubs at the college level, they think of laid back, leisurely activities, but this isn’t the case with a number of club sports on campus.
Sports, such as men’s soccer, lacrosse and hockey, have become popular among student-athletes, because they are not offered as varsity sports at Idaho.
These sports, and the rest of the club sports, take tremendous amounts of skill and dedication. The athletes devote years, if not their entire lives, to these sports — just like athletes who compete at the varsity level. The club athletes aren’t on scholarship, so they truly play for the love of the game.
Despite their popularity among the athletes, club teams still aren’t given the amount of support they deserve. With minimal fan bases, stands are often empty at club games.
A rare exception, however, is the hockey team. To the community’s credit, the two home games the team played this year had tremendous turnouts. Even with an undersized ice rink, and bleachers to match, the Palouse Ice Rink was filled to — or near — capacity on both occasions.
During both home affairs this season, deafening chants of the Idaho fight song electrified the small rink, giving the Vandal hockey team a nice home-ice advantage.
There is no reason why other clubs shouldn’t be able to share a similar feeling.
Despite the football and basketball programs not being perennial powerhouses, both, at the very least, get support from UI students and community members. Club sports aren’t given the same courtesy.
Many students wouldn’t know these clubs existed if it wasn’t for the occasional flyer or table at the annual Vandal Friday event.
Part of this problem has to do with the finances of the clubs themselves. The aforementioned hockey club is in the process of fundraising for a bigger, full-sized rink. Ideally, it would be closer to campus, which should help with fan support.
Many of the other high-level club sports, like lacrosse and men’s soccer, don’t compete in Moscow enough. The closest games to campus are usually in areas like Spokane or Coeur d’Alene, so it is hard to vilify any student for not traveling with the team.
With this said, on the rare occasions when club teams do get to compete in or near Moscow, they deserve all the support they can get.
Joshua Gamez can be reached at [email protected]