Archery, dressage and skydiving are among 14 University of Connecticut teams that have been demoted from club sport status while they and 22 other teams are losing all of their funding from UConn Recreation.
That department is severing ties with those 14 club teams, which UConn spokesperson Stephanie Reitz said also include men’s crew, cycling, equestrian, gymnastics, kickline, polo, running, sailing, ski, tap and woodsmen. Those teams do not use UConn Rec facilities, she said.
Word of the demotions came early in the spring semester, but the cuts take effect on July 1. That will leave the teams to rely solely on financial support from the Undergraduate Student Government, UConn Foundation donations and their own fundraising. Student club leaders said that many of the teams being cut only received $1,000 a year from UConn Rec. A UConn budget document obtained through a Freedom of Information request shows that the department was spending $50,000 on support for club sports this year.
The demoted teams were informed via email by UConn Recreation, which described it as an “opportunity” for the teams, ski club member Trevor Buckeridge said.
The email said “that the transition ‘provides an opportunity for teams to continue their activities outside of Club Sports,’” Buckeridge said. “In reality, what is being labeled as an opportunity is the removal of funding, structure, and institutional support that teams have relied on for years. That language feels not only misleading but dismissive of the very real impact on student-athletes.”
Neither Reitz nor UConn Rec officials provided an explanation for how the decision was made.
The demotion has upset many club sports members, who say they have built their teams into close-knit groups, Chase Haitsch, secretary of the UConn Woodsmen club, said. It has 25 to 30 members who compete in about eight competitions a year in timber sports that include chopping wood and chainsaw events that replicate what lumberjacks do on the job.
“Woodsmen grew from a group of a pretty niche, small group and it absolutely ballooned up in size,” Haitsch said. “It’s a huge family of like-minded people now who just all share the same interests and just come together over this wonderful sport.”
Before the demotions, UConn Recreation had previously supported 36 club sports, its website said. The remaining club sports teams will retain their status but will not be receiving financial support from UConn Recreation, Reitz said.
In a statement to The Daily Campus in response to its FOI request, UConn said it was working to address its funding shortfalls.
“[The university] has been working to address fiscal constraints throughout this budget year as it faces state funding shortfalls and other revenue reductions,” the statement read. “This has required cost-containment plans throughout the institution, including the Division of Student Life & Enrollment and UConn Recreation.”
The Undergraduate Student Government held a meeting on Feb. 17 to hear directly from the teams affected by the funding cuts and demotions. Club members attended from women’s rugby, men’s lacrosse, water polo, hockey, tap, women’s ultimate, men’s soccer, field hockey, cycling, men’s and women’s skiing and women’s lacrosse.
During the meeting, teams spoke about their struggles to support their travel to competitions. Billy Lipinski, the student government comptroller, said he met with UConn officials to express his worry about the sustainability of the club teams.
“I do believe that the Rec Center wants what’s best for these groups, but right now, it’s not what’s best for these groups,” he said.
The Rec Center’s resources were available for all of the club sports this semester and the remaining 22 will still receive help in the next fiscal year.
“UConn Recreation will continue to support the operations of club sports teams, including with resources such as access to Rec spaces, support for their fundraising efforts, and helping them identify other potential funding sources,” the university’s FOIA statement read.
Ski Team Secretary Nathan Zimbelman said the team does not practice at the Rec Center — they go north to the slopes in Vermont and New Hampshire to practice.
“All club teams lost their funding, but only teams that do not use UConn-managed facilities — including the ski team — were also removed from Club Sports and transitioned to ‘registered student organizations,” Buckeridge said. “In their communication, Recreation stated that for teams operating outside their facilities, ‘there is no longer a clear operational purpose for remaining within the Club Sports program.’”
He said the team relied on the financial and administrative support provided by UConn Recreation.
“This decision has immediate financial consequences for our athletes,” Buckeridge said. “Team dues are already $900, and for those who travel and compete at higher levels, including nationals, total out-of-pocket costs can exceed $1,500 per year.”
The ski team consists of 22 members who compete in Division I competitions, most recently winning the women’s national championship in the slalom event last year.
“I think having this decision made for us was surprising,” Zimbelman said. “I don’t know that it’s necessarily a bad thing because it is probably the decision we would have made eventually, but they didn’t really give us a warning in saying, ‘hey, you’re not a club sport anymore.’ It just kind of happened out of the blue, again, without a whole lot of communication.”
The team members said they will appreciate the continued support from the student government.
“It’s also important to note that this decision came from UConn Recreation, not from the student body,” Buckeridge said. “[USG], which is student-run, continues to fund our team and remains our primary source of university support. In that sense, student backing for teams like ours is still strong, even as administrative support is being reduced.”
Despite the change in status, the ski team plans to return to the slopes.
“We are confident in our ability to continue forward, but this decision significantly increases both the financial and operational burden on student-athletes,” Buckeridge said. “More than anything, it leaves us questioning how teams like ours fit into the university’s priorities moving forward.”
The Woodsmen were shocked by UConn Rec’s decision, Haitsch said, because they always had strong communication with the department. Early in the semester, officials there had asked the team whether they wanted to remain a club sport, he said.
“We believed that it was going to be our choice,” he said. “But one day, we woke up and we just got an email with a couple of other club sports telling us that it wasn’t our decision and that we were no longer a club sport.”
Being a club team has helped them to recruit new members, he said.
“The club sports came with a certain level of prestige and it put us on the map and got something that I would consider a niche sport to get out there,” he said.
As a veteran member, Haitsch said the team’s growth over the past two years has been impressive.
“I know our team. I know we’re strong,” he said. “I know we can get through it, but I just want to leave it better than I found it, and this is making it a bit hard.”
The UConn Club Running team, which is being demoted, had 120 members last fall. Forty-nine of them traveled to compete at nationals, which have ranged between the Midwest, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Colin Slavin, the team treasurer, said UConn Rec gave it $1,000 a year and the student government provided up to $15,000.
Though the contribution from UConn Rec was small, it helped the team, he said. Members like Jacob Gilson, the team’s event coordinator, are left asking what guidelines UConn Rec followed in deciding which teams to demote.
“I feel like they’re just kind of cutting the lower-class sports that aren’t getting that much funding, and I don’t see the point of that,” Gilson said. “It doesn’t seem fair.”
Katie Servas is a journalism major at the University of Connecticut. An earlier version of the story was published by The Daily Campus. It is being republished with the newspaper’s permission.
This story is republished via CT Community News, a service of the Connecticut Student Journalism Collaborative, an organization sponsored by journalism departments at college and university campuses across the state.
