While talented recruited athletes get the best training that money can buy, the rest of us get club sports — and at Princeton that does not seem to count for much. In an ideal world, club sports, which are the primary form of exercise for a substantial number of Princetonians, would be set up to encourage students to participate and represent Princeton proudly. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
Some of the problems stem from decisions made at higher levels of the administration. A large deficiency in funding is perhaps the biggest of these problems. Many teams, for example, are forced to use more than half of their annual funding in order to attend a single tournament or match. Corresponding teams from other, similarly sized universities often receive several times the funding of Princeton club teams do.
The University also offers no special medical treatment for club sports members. Players injured during matches or tournaments are offered only the services students can receive at McCosh Health Services. This leaves teams even further in the red after reaching into their own pockets to pay for field trainers.
Even those few fortunate club teams who are able to fund themselves frequently encounter problems when they try to access those funds. Long wait times for obtaining funding make the current system nearly unworkable. Though some supervision over student use of funds is appropriate, requiring more than two or three weeks notice to access those funds is not. Tournaments or needs often arise in a far shorter time horizon.
To make matters worse, many students involved in club sports feel that no one is really interested in fixing the situation. Nearly all club team leaders agree that the administrators of club sports are not only unresponsive to requests, but also flat-out unhelpful. Instead of receiving advice and support in an environment of understandable bureaucracy and limited resources, club sports leaders are instead chastised about their spending and sometimes arbitrarily punished.
If Princeton wants club sports to be a meaningful activity where teams can represent the University with pride, drastic change is necessary. Without such changes, we are asking far too much of our club teams, while giving them far too little.
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