Club Athletes Petition to Compete this Fall

Students raise concerns about Campus Recreation’s practice-only policy for club sports.

Campus Recreation announced in an email sent to students on Aug. 25 that club sports — which are in the process of being phased back in after 18 months of standstill — will not be permitted to compete against other schools during the fall quarter.

“All 17 Club Sports will be back on the practice fields, courts, and other facilities this fall,” the email reads. “The conditioning this fall will be important to get our programs back to competitions safely.”

Intramural sports also remain on standby, though the university has made it clear that they are working to reimplement various opportunities throughout the fall, according to the Aug. 25 email.

Santa Clara Men’s Ultimate Frisbee Captain Zachary Heffron organized a petition in early September to rally student support and urge the administration to reverse the club sports competition ban.

The petition has since accumulated over 300 signatures. As of spring 2020, there were over 450 athletes in the club sports program, according to Santa Clara’s website.

While Heffron is hopeful that teams will be able to compete at some point during the academic year, he expressed that the fall season is a critical period for club sports at Santa Clara.

“Each club team has a different reason the fall season is important. For some, their main competitions happen in the fall, and not being able to play means missing their season,” Heffron explains in the written petition. “For others, the Fall season is how [they] develop and retain rookies in order to have the best shot at a winning season later in the year.”

Senior Rugby player Sydney Lenoch raised other concerns about missing the fall season.

“[Rugby] games are eighty minutes and very high contact,” she said. “So if you take away some of the games in the fall, we would have to play almost every weekend to fit the games into our winter quarter schedule. Playing seven or eight games in a row is really not good for our bodies...it doesn’t give us a lot of time to recover.”

As National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I programs at Santa Clara have resumed their normal schedule, Heffron and other club athletes assumed they would similarly have the chance to compete in the fall. The return of in-person classes and the campus-wide vaccination policy contributed to the raised hopes of a regular competitive season.

“Division I sports have already practiced and competed across the country this year without many restrictions besides the whole school-mandated vaccine requirement. When we saw that other student-athletes were able to play safely...without much concern, we thought our chances of return skyrocketed,” Heffron wrote.

In light of these circumstances, Heffron and other club sports leaders believe the school’s decision to suspend club sports was not only motivated by worries related to the pandemic, but also due to a lack of resources needed for Campus Recreation.

Director of Campus Recreation Janice DeMonsi explained that one of the main reasons for the practice-only policy was staffing. Most student workers went on to graduate in 2020 and 2021 as Campus Recreation remained mostly inoperative during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thus, roughly 98% of the department’s staff are new to their position, and they are still busy hiring more employees to handle day-to-day Campus Recreation operations, according to DeMonsi.

As a result, the department is slowly phasing in services and programs like club and intramural sports, while prioritizing facilities that accommodate the most students, faculty and staff, like Malley Center.

Intramural sports consistently draw half of the school’s undergraduate student body into their membership every year and welcome all skill levels, according to Santa Clara’s website. Unlike club sports, games are played between teams within the Santa Clara community. DeMonsi indicated that phasing in intramural sports is a priority of the department.

There is not a specific timeline for when the university will allow club sports to compete, but Campus Recreation is currently developing a protocol for home and away events.