Out of the three options students can participate in to play sports on the Colorado Mesa University campus, club sports are the perfect middle ground.
Varsity sports require high commitment and high expectation. With practice almost every day, tournaments and games, they can be very stressful for students.
Intramural sports are almost the opposite, providing a relaxed and goofier environment for students to play their games, without scheduled practices and workouts.
Club sports combine the most popular factors of both intramural and varsity sports into one. In a club, teams are made up of anyone who wishes to play and usually holds practice once or twice a week.
The environment is typically a more relaxed version of varsity, but not quite to the level of the frivolous play encompassed in intramurals. Members are there to play seriously but to enjoy the sport and have fun with friends, without the stress and expectations of varsity.
It’s the favorite option of sports for students who are passionate about a sport, but who still want a chill environment to play with their friends.
CMU student, Evan Johnson said, “Being apart of a club sport is a lot of fun. It is different from a varsity in the sense that you have a lot more freedom and flexibility with how you do things and where you do things. It’s just a fun thing to do if you have spare time and want to engage in an activity that you enjoy.”
Johnson is a freshman goalie for CMU’s club water polo team.
“One big thing I love about club level is that you can, to a certain degree do it your way as opposed to having to adhere to an extremely structured and strict schedule that may not be beneficial in terms of classes,” Johnson said. “You have a lot of flexibility to do what you need and want to do while also enjoying the sport you want to play in college.”
Another freshman player on the water polo team, Nathan Smirnoff, said, “It is rewarding, it’s fun, you get to meet cool people, make a lot of friends and you get to do what you love most.”
Reese Kegans, head of the club sports program at CMU, said, “I wouldn’t say that it’s [club sports] better, I would just say that it offers a different perspective, club sports isn’t better or worse than varsity athletics, it’s more of a different outreach; it reaches a different student that wants to do a rodeo or ski team,” Kegans said.
The club sports program at CMU hosts a larger variety of sports that either varsity or intramural and is a loved activity by all of the students involved. The relaxed but still serious environment of club sports is something unique that separates it from the varsity and intramural programs at CMU.
