New clubs and organizations seem to pop up just about every day. For freshmen (and the prefrosh who will be on campus this weekend), walking into Dillon Gymnasium for the Activities Fair and seeing the wide variety of extracurricular options available can be overwhelming.
However, despite the wide variety of opportunities Princeton clubs offer, several freshmen saw a glaring hole in the list of club teams that needed to be filled. Freshmen Mike Kosk and Ethan Vasquez decided to take it upon themselves to fix this by founding the Princeton Croquet Club.
“I played a considerable amount of croquet with my family,” Kosk said on how he got into the sport. “Their lack of ability for most normal sports naturally drew them to games and sports of strategy. For as long as I can remember, I played backyard croquet with them.”
The idea to start the club came to Kosk and Vasquez because of a strong desire to play a competitive sport at Princeton. Vasquez competed in croquet before going off to college, and he wanted to engage in a sport competitively. The two friends took up squash when they got on campus, attempting to join the club team. However, according to Kosk, this attempt was unfulfilling.
“Ironically the idea of club croquet came up when my close friends and I all decided to take up squash as a sport here at Princeton,” he said. “We tried joining club squash but were turned off by the dues and lack of a club culture, which rugby or club soccer have.”
Croquet became an option for them as an alternative to squash. It was initially a joke, but progressively became a serious idea. The combination of a lack of excitement about other club sports and the fond memories of these friends’ personal experiences has led to the founding of the Princeton croquet club, which currently has six members. Although the club has not been ratified yet, Kosk is optimistic this ratification will happen soon.
“We've been in close contact with Mitch Reum, the club sports director,” Kosk said. “We just had a meeting last Tuesday and the ratification of club croquet is basically guaranteed.”
The two requirements for a club sport to be ratified are a national governing body and the presence of enough competition. Kosk said they “found both in the U.S. Croquet Association, which tracks competing collegiate teams and hosts a professional tournament each year in Palm Springs.”
The team will be competing in a semi-national tournament at SUNY New Paltz on April 20 and at Nationals at Haverford on April 27. Kosk says that the team is excited to get into the heart of real competition. The fact that such a young and new team is competing in Nationals is no small story. Kosk says they were asked to compete not only because the team has extensive croquet experience, but also because of “the historical tradition of croquet at Princeton.” These croquet enthusiasts are not only bringing a fun activity to campus, but also an old Princetonian tradition.
The team is currently holding practices in the Forbes backyard, which is not regulation size and definitely not an ideal practice space. However, the team is keeping a positive attitude. “Though the field is not perfect by any means, it provides a great opportunity to practice our strategy, which is without a doubt the key to success in the sport,” Kosk said, also adding that when the team gets some new equipment, they might shift practices to the field hockey field.
Kosk and Vasquez have brought something new and lively to the Princeton club sports scene with their club croquet team, and they hope it will only become more popular. They will go on the road to play in semi-nationals and Nationals over the next few weeks in their first real competition against other schools.
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