Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, club sports at WCU have faced low attendance. Students are not participating in practices and because of this many club sports presidents and leaders fear the future of their club sport.
Club sports at WCU are sectioned into tiers based on things such as attendance, community service, fundraising and more. Tier 1 is for non-funded conditional (NFC) and is the lowest, and Tier 3 is the highest. Based on these levels, each club sport can receive more funding and have priority for facility space.
For the 2019-2020 school year, tier requirements were because of COVID-19 and the decision to send students home for the remainder of the spring semester. While club sports were not allowed in the Fall 2020 semester, they were this spring and tier requirements were hard to meet for students.
Due to this WCU club sports director, Michael Birch, decided that they will also not have tier requirements for the 2020-2021 school year. All clubs will maintain their tier levels for the 2021-2022 school year. But this doesn’t make the situation less stressful for club sports.
For equestrian club president Madison Kitchen, tier requirements are a big deal for her club. The equestrian club has been at Tier 3, the highest tier, for several years. Tier 3 can request up to 60% of fees/dues associated with governing body and competition costs including travel and 35% of other team expenses like uniforms or equipment.
“We really rely on the funding from tier requirements because we travel very far for our competitions and often stay in hotels. Not having to worry about paying for some of this stuff is always nice and we can use our fundraising towards other things,” Kitchen said.
With the school scheduled to return to normal operations for the 2021-2022 school year, Kitchen hopes they can get their attendance and other requirements back to where they were before the pandemic hit.
“We’ve worked really hard to keep our attendance and fundraising up to meet all the requirements but obviously it’s difficult with the pandemic. We’re hoping to really work hard next year when the school hopefully starts to return to normal,” Kitchen said.
The president of women’s rugby club, Brooklynn Herold, is working to keep their tier requirements up as well. Women’s rugby is at Tier 2, but they were hoping to get the club to Tier 3. Recruitment this semester has made this difficult.
“There are some club sports that haven’t had enough individuals interested to host practices which the rugby team is close to becoming. The hardest portion of maintaining this year’s team is trying to recruit and engage new players,” Herold said.
The goal right now is for tier requirements to be used for the 2021-2022 school year so the club sports can have their funding and be able to travel for competitions.
