As the University of Houston witnesses the re-emergence of its athletics program, there is another growing part of athletic life at UH as well. Everyone hears about intramural sports, but not everyone has heard of the sport clubs, which are different in a few key ways to UH’s intramurals.
Sport clubs tend to travel to different schools within the region and compete or train within their respective sport or activity. They are also affiliated with organizations that hold the competitions and meets.
There are a number of different sport clubs, such as soccer, tennis, roller hockey, cycling, volleyball, rugby, Aikido, mixed martial arts and fencing as well as many others.†Each club sets its schedule and agenda.
Pretty much all clubs are in need of financial backing. The University has been gracious enough to donate a certain amount of funds toward the sport clubs, which is then distributed among the groups. Many clubs participate in fundraisers and petition sponsors as well.†Unfortunately, while some of the clubs are in good financial standing, others are just scraping by with limited contestants in tournaments, perhaps inadequate or old equipment, or are short on registration fees at some competitions.
Of course, everything is attempting to unfold as fair as possible, but sometimes clubs are in need.
Just this past year some new clubs have either emerged or re-emerged from hiatus, such as the swimming club. Those who manage to get these organizations started up again should be congratulated.
However, some of these clubs are new and do not receive as much budget money as some of the better-known clubs, such as the cycling club.
Not to take away from clubs like the cycling club, they
have put in a lot of hard work and gotten great results.†It is counter-balanced by performance, but some clubs require a larger budget as their registration and affiliation fees are higher.†With these high, necessary budgets, some of the newer or smaller clubs receive a budget of much lesser proportions.
Keeping all the achievements and necessities in mind, an increase in the total budget allotted to the sport clubs here at the University of Houston would be in order. Perhaps there should be a meeting on increasing the budget. It would, however, have to take place outside of the sport clubs themselves, as they do not decide how much budget is allotted as a whole.
With the coming fall semester, many clubs will be back in full swing, and with a higher budget many of them could increase the number, and thus the recognition of the clubs as a whole regionally or even nationally.†When this happens there could be the possibility of holding tournaments here, which in turn would produce income for the University.
Bahar, president of Cougar Aikido at UH, can be reached via [email protected]
