Ultimate Club Sports Preview
By LAUREN SAUTER
Sports Associate

What, exactly, are club sports? Well, they are sports that are not sponsored by the intercollegiate varsity athletics department, but which have galvanized sufficient interest throughout the colleges to form clubs. Although they receive a small stipend from the school, costs for equipment and traveling are subsidized by club dues and fund-raising efforts. They usually practice about twice a week, because members may be involved in other sports and activities throughout the year. Club sports include rugby, lacrosse, ultimate frisbee, men’s volleyball, badminton, and ballroom dancing. (Side note: You may be surprised that ballroom dancing is considered to be a sport. You may be unaware that waltzing happens outside of Civil War movies and senior citizen activity hours. You may hate ballroom dancing. No one could not be reached for comment on the questionable qualifications of ballroom dancing as an “athletic” pursuit, but I have a few statements to make in it’s defense...wait, no I don’t.)

So, back to the “sport” part of club sports. Although most club play happens in the spring, teams practice all year round and engage in competitive play when the chance presents itself. Women’s rugby was covered last week in an article by insider Janice Kang, but if that just whet your appetite for more women’s rugby, you’ll be interested to know that their first game is on October 5. Rookies will be playing Occidental at noon, and vets will compete against UCSD at 3 pm, up on Linde Field at Harvey Mudd.

Men’s rugby, though currently in pre-season, is gearing up for tournament play in the spring. I had the pleasure of talking with Nick Dreves ’04, a back liner returning for his fourth year on the rugby team. The official name of the team is Claremont Colleges Men’s Rugby Football Club (CCMRFC), and the CCMRFC currently holds the title of Southern California League Champions. Although many team members are involved in other sports, including football, they somehow make time for rugby practice and beer drinking. The majority of the 30-35 athletes are returning players, but there are a lot of rookies who have been making an impact in the pre-season.

The rugby team competes with various college teams and non-affiliated club teams throughout the season, but spring will mark the important tournaments, such as the Elite Eight, which the CCMRFC has taken 4 years and running. They are also planning a spring tour of France through Paris and Normandy. “We’ve never been this serious in the fall, but we are already running and getting into shape. Vets and rookies are showing a lot more dedication than ever before, and we are chomping at the bit to play a real game,” said Dreves. The rugby team is comprised of a lot of talented seniors from Pomona, such as back liner and team captain Alex Mondau. Other solid players include Dreves, Tom Woo, Stuart Schroff, and Scott Pelletier. Dreves, however, emphasized that, “We play as a team, it’s not about individuals.” In all, the team lost only 3 starting players from last year, allowing them to build a good squad as the season approaches. In competitive play, it is important to note that the CCMRFC competes against much larger D-I schools, many of them state universities where rugby is considered a varsity sport. These teams have a larger pool of athletes to draw from, as well as complete funding. That being said, the success of men’s rugby is quite an accomplishment.

Ultimate frisbee players tend to call this sport “Ultimate,” not taking advantage of one of the weirdest words ever invented by humans, “frisbee.” What a word! Go ahead, say it out loud. I think you’ll like what you hear. After you’re done with that, I have another word for you: BrainEaters, the name of the frisbee team. Originally started back in 1978 at Pitzer, frisbee spread like a highly-contagious disease to all 5 colleges. Captain Charlie Nordstrom PO ’06, informed me that the name “BrainEaters” was taken from some B-movie. My curiosity piqued, I typed the word into a Google search, and learned that BrainEaters are “Crawling, slimy things terror-bent on destroying the world!” Whoa! Who knew the Frisbee team had such malevolent designs! I guess the mascot of a little goat’s brain inside a jar of formaldehyde should have tipped us off, but we are foolish mortals, blind to the nefarious ones who walk among us.

Actually, Nordstrom seemed anything but nefarious as he told me about men’s frisbee. The majority of the team are underclassmen, with a lot of junior players abroad, and few seniors who felt comfortable enough eating brains to join up. The frisbee team travels around the Southwest and California, wreaking havoc, consuming gray matter, and competing against college teams and independent frisbee clubs. Technically, there is no frisbee “season” and Nordstrom said there were no tournaments scheduled in the near future. This lack of structure is somewhat suspicious and unsettling; if they aren’t playing frisbee, what are they doing? (hint: eating brains).