By Logan Nipper, Macy Morgan, Abe Avila and Parker Tuerff
Many athletes spend countless hours of their youth training to refine the skills required to succeed in their respective sports. Towards the end of high school, athletes are forced to make a pivotal life decision: To pursue their athletic career to next level or drop it and experience life without a full time sport commitment.
But what if there was something as competitive, as team oriented, but without the time commitment in college? Fortunately, students do have another option. Club Sports. In today’s spectrum of collegiate and even high school sports, athletes are required to attend several meetings and participate in gym workouts on top of regular practices and scheduled games. In addition, athletes have to set time aside for study hours.
The magic behind club sports is that it allows students to get together regularly to play a sport they love, though they do not meet as often or for as long as varsity or other official school teams. Club sports are typically managed and run by the participants themselves, including coach selection, travel, fundraising, scheduling, practices, and participant development.
Club sports vary of representation depending on age group. Growing up in Nashville in the days before college, club sports had and still has zero affiliation with the school. Typically, it was represented by certain areas of town. For example, in Brentwood, Tennessee, there is a middle school football team called the Brentwood Blaze. They’re home field was located in the center of Crockett park in Brentwood. Other examples include the Franklin Knights of Franklin, Tennessee, and Tennessee soccer club which was comprised of several teams depending on age groups.
However, club sports in college have direct affiliation with the school. UTC is not a school of SEC-like magnitude, therefore, several club sports are available for students to play. Athletes in high school are able to once again represent their school without the hassle of meetings and team workouts. A rather sweet deal for those whose lives have been committed to sports from a young age.
Currently, UTC’s selection of club sports is comprised of baseball, climbing, cycling, fencing, inline hockey, men’s soccer, men’s lacrosse, men’s rugby, tennis, volleyball and a handful of other small sports. With some sports, practice is not mandatory, and in some cases, players must drive to the opposing places and get reimbursed for gas.
Club sports are given a certain budget in which they must make work, however, unlike official school sports like football or basketball, the budget is not quite as large. To sum it up, club sports are the grey area between the relaxed nature intramural sports and the intensity of a varsity team. Skill to play is key unlike intramural however the life consumption of meetings, media, practice and more fall by the way side. It also is a nice alternative for those who do not want to go the liberal arts school route that involves playing for an official school team, but an extremely small one.
Life of a collegiate soccer player is filled with training sessions, meetings and seemingly endless fitness tests. On the other end of the spectrum is intramural (IM) soccer. IM soccer is fun, laid back, but often is not very competitive. In between these two types of soccer is the goldilocks zone, which contains Club soccer.
Jarred Standford, Senior President of UTC Men’s Soccer team, described Club soccer’s level on a lictor scale, zero being intramurals and ten being Division I soccer. “Club soccer would be a six when it comes to the complexity and seriousness of it. Intensity wise Club soccer is way more intense than high school soccer.”
Club soccer gives you the best of both worlds. You get the school crest on your chest, the team comradery, and the level of competition without the hectic training regimens, meetings, and above all fitness tests.
Most soccer players played for their respective high schools in the spring and clubs in the fall. This gave players year-round training and the chance to play other players at similar skill levels. Club or travel soccer is usually more competitive than school soccer, but it is focused more on the individual rather than the team. Travel soccer teams aim to play in tournaments where college coaches will be so that their players get exposure. There are different tiers of travel soccer ranging from Division I to III. Then it expands from DI to the state team, region team and national team. Once you graduate from high school, the only level you can play for is the national team, which consists of the top 1% of players in America and abroad.
Soccer novices may be surprised to find out that SEC schools and Big 12 schools do not even sponsor men’s soccer as a University sport. UTC falls among the schools that do not have a University men’s soccer team, only a men’s Club team. This is because of the NCAA’s Title IX.
Any school that has a football team would struggle to stay in compliance with Title IX due to the rules on having 65 full athletic scholarships. No women’s team comes close to meeting that, so a lot of other male teams, like baseball, take the hit for that and ultimately get put on the back burner. A simple Google of “Title IX men’s soccer” will show a huge amount of articles written about the downfall of men’s soccer at Universities. Thankfully, intramurals and Club soccer exist.
Where does that leave the players who either don’t want to play collegiate soccer or simply did not get the exposure necessary to do so? The answer is collegiate club soccer. Senior President, Coach and Player of the UTC Men’s Soccer team Jarred Stanford has been a member of the club team all four years. Stanford initially was unaware of club soccer and just happened to stumble upon it.
“Honestly, my roommate and I were in the UC and we saw a flyer – we both played in high school – so we were like ‘I guess we’ll see what it’s about’.” Stanford said.
Stanford started out how most freshmen do, playing on the non-travel team. The non-travel team’s primary purpose is to make up the numbers at practice. They do get to dress out for home games and will usually see the field a couple of times in their debut season.
Stanford could have gone to play collegiate soccer at the Division II, III or NAIA level, but chose a different path.
“There’s not a lot of DI schools when it comes to Men’s soccer. So you don’t really have a lot of options if you don’t want to play DII or go to a liberal arts school.” Stanford said.
Often times players are burnt out when they graduate high school and thought of immediately training to pass a fitness test and two-a-days on the horizon sounds terrible.
“Waking up at 5 a.m. every day and practicing every day just seemed like a lot of work,” Stanford said.
Stanford found that club soccer helped fill the void of continuing his soccer career.
“We practice three times a week with games on the weekend, so you still get a good soccer experience,” Stanford said.
The past two and a half seasons were different for Stanford as he took on more responsibility being the club soccer President and Coach.
“During the first portion of each semester it gets incredibly busy. I am sending out ten emails a day, making flyers and setting up a bunch of stuff for fields and things like that,” said Stanford. “But once it gets rolling, it becomes pretty smooth.” There are some challenges that come with moving from player to President of a club team.
“The whole entire club experience when you are in charge is terrible. The club organization for UTC is awful. There are four people who do the exact same job and you have to email all of them but none of them get the job done,” said Stanford, “but when it comes to the actual governing body, none of it is a problem. It’s the stuff internally at each school is that is terrible. When it comes to the small things like field requests or budgeting, they make it as complex as possible.”
UTC participates in National Intramural and Recreational Sports Association (NIRSA), Region II, Mountain West Conference. They are joined in Mountain West conference by Murray St., MTSU, Northern Kentucky, Tennessee, Tennessee Tech, and Vanderbilt. In the 2018 season, the UTC Men’s Club team qualified for the NIRSA regional tournament, but received a one year ban for abandoning the final group stage game.
The club team has continued to play region games in the 2019 season, but are unable to participate in the postseason. They are currently 6-3 and would be 5-2 if region matches counted with one out of conference game remaining against Western Carolina. The Club team also plans to host an eight-team tournament in the spring to round out the school year.