Mary Ciecek/Daily Bruin Senior Staff The water skiing
team is one of 22 club teams at UCLA. Despite getting little
financial or emotional support, team members have a clear
competitive drive.
By Greg Schain
Daily Bruin Reporter
There is a large but discreet population of unsung athletic
heroes roaming the UCLA campus.
These athletes play club sports, a thriving activity at
UCLA.
They get little financial or emotional support from the UCLA
brass. They get no priority registration, no academic tutoring, no
access to athletic training facilities and no clothing or backpacks
to let everyone know that they are members of a team.
And they get little respect from the student body.
But these athletes can labor up to 20 hours per week, sometimes
more, concentrating on the sport they love.
There are 22 club teams at UCLA, matching the number of NCAA
teams present on campus.
Some teams have a long standing tradition. The ice hockey team
has been going strong for 75 years.
Other teams, like women’s water polo, have just started
this season.
But both of these teams have something in common: they have
earned respect as prestigious club programs on a national
level.
“The ice hockey team has done very well in the past two
years,” said Chad Brown, manager of club sports at UCLA.
“They have been in the top 12 teams in the country and have
competed nationally.”
In fact, the team’s coach, Daryl Evans, is a former member
of the Los Angeles Kings and has arranged for the Kings to sponsor
the team with uniforms and other equipment.
The women’s water polo team has also vastly exceeded
expectations. In its first season, the team finished first in its
conference and went on to place third at the national collegiate
club championships.
Many other clubs have encountered national success this season.
A member of the cycling team, Alex Smith, won the Collegiate
National Road Race Championships in Colorado.
“Our whole team is so proud of him,” said sophomore
Feliciano Aguilar, a member of the cycling team. “He has been
working so hard. You can see his work ethic every day, getting up
early every morning to ride and not thinking twice about
it.”
Many other UCLA club teams, including men’s gymnastics,
women’s field hockey, women’s lacrosse, archery, and
women’s rugby have placed high on the national level in the
past few years.
But all of this success has a price.
Unlike NCAA sports, the club teams get little financial support
from UCLA. They have to spend countless hours every season raising
money for travel, equipment and other expenses incurred during the
course of a season.
“They have fund-raisers through T-shirt sales, and they
work at different events like at the Coliseum where they are
ushers,” Brown said.
Another way club teams subsidize costs is by relying on
sponsors. For example, the cycling team gets corporations to give
it discounts on merchandise.
“Some companies give us good deals on their
products,” Aguilar said. “And many give us a few
products for free and then we buy the rest.”
Having to spend so much time fund-raising detracts from
schoolwork and practice time.
“The lack of funding is the larger issue involving club
sports,” said senior Peter Burba, a member of the men’s
rugby team. “No one cares about us.”
But members of club teams put aside their lack of money and
their lack of acknowledgment. They play their sport because they
simply love to compete.
“Many of our players were former high school standouts who
weren’t quite good enough to play on the NCAA level or get
scholarships,” Brown said.
And many other players do it because of the friendships they
form and the experiences that they encounter.
“The camaraderie is a major reason that we play,”
Burba said. “There is a special friendship involved (with
members of the team).”