Matt O'Bryant
The club rankings for all of club sports will be released Wednesday at the Club Sports Banquet. Lisa Hanson, assistant director for Club Sports said the latest list includes a new group — the Martial Arts Club.
Although the listing is currently unofficial, for the first time in its 11-year history the club will find itself in the top 14 out of the 40 current club teams, according to Hanson.
Club Sports provides an allocation process which divides all of the current funded club teams into sections of three, each providing different amounts of funding, said Hanson.
“The higher [club teams] are in the ranking, the better the chance they have of increasing their funding,” Hanson said. “The lower they are in the rankings, the better chance they have of decreasing their funding from the previous year.”
For the upcoming year, out of the $3,610 projected budget by the club, $650 was proposed by the club’s five officers — president Daniel Joe, vice president Jessica Bass, treasurer Mhamad El-Kara, secretary Mike Shoup and service coordinator Anna Godwin.
The March 23 meeting with the Club Sports Council made history for the club as it will now be more equipped to increase awareness and exposure for possible expansion of benefits to club members, according to El-Kara.
“It’s definitely rich and compelling,” El-Kara said. “We’re going to use the requested money to pay our members’s national dues, so that way that they can join the national association and they can gain rank [in their belt status] that way.”
Shoup also said joining the association was important.
“We’re definitely going to use the funds to join the association,” Shoup said. “That’s really important to us.”
According to instructor and cofounder Robert First, involvement in training camps and martial arts events are a part of the club’s ongoing aspiration, and funding from Club Sports will only further these goals.
“We [First and cofounder Elizabeth Roman] think it is a great thing that the University is willing to help inspire these students,” First said. “The money, it’s not enough, but we hope it will inspire the students to make up the difference and be able to come to the training camps.”
Many of the training events are held in cities such as Atlanta, Ga., Clemson, S.C., and Jacksonville, Fla., which requires the students to spend money on gas and other things, but the added funds from Club Sports will aid in the alleviation of some of the costs, First said.
“Paying for gas and food for an entire weekend event can sometimes throw off a student’s semester budget,” First said. “So things like this can help the students out a lot.”
The club members said they hope that with these funds they can market the club with no costs coming out of their pockets, as well as having extra money for events.
“We’re going to use a lot of the money for advertising, basically posters, table tents and newspaper ads — that’s going to be the main focus of the allocated money,” El-Kara said. “The object of it is to make the club as large as we possibly can because we can always pull in more instructors — I’m all for it!”
With the added funds from Club Sports, the hope of heightened advertising and exposure, and the aid in funds to travel, the goal of reaching out more to the community is definitely within sight, according to El-Kara and First.
“Our goal for 10 years from now is to have more and more students come to us and continue to help the club grow,” First said. El-Kara noted these efforts will also include reaching out to the community.
“Getting more members, being more involved with the community, doing more community-based programs, just making the community better as a whole is our main focus,” El-Kara said.