I play on the Stanford Club Baseball team. We face other club teams from California and Nevada. Our hats have the National Club Baseball Association logo on the back. In other words, I am a club athlete.

Of course, Stanford University doesn’t see it that way. Ask the Athletic Department about a club baseball team and they will give you a blank stare.

That’s because according to the University, I am part of an ASSU Voluntary Student Organization (VSO) athletic club. In a move that can only be explained by an attempt to increase the size of its mind-numbingly slow bureaucracy, Stanford decided to separate club teams that do or do not have a Division I affiliate.

For example, since Stanford has a DI baseball team, club baseball is a VSO. Same thing for basketball, soccer, volleyball, tennis, water polo, women’s lacrosse and other sports that Stanford already has.

What is the significance of the separation? Well, it means that club baseball stores its gear in the back of a player’s car, while ultimate frisbee has three coaches and annually travels to a tournament in Las Vegas.

Sorry, that was an unfair jab. I’m sure frisbee needs those three coaches to instruct them on the intricate art of a sport that grandmothers play with their grandchildren on beaches in Hawaii.

The biggest difference and the only practical one, is that VSOs receive much less money from the University. Club sports and VSOs both receive money from The Stanford Fund, normally around $1,500 per quarter. Both normally charge member dues (Club Baseball is $200 per year). What VSOs do not receive, however, are special fees — the fees students vote on and can request refunds from. Currently, club sports collectively receive $8.23 per student per quarter and that money is then split between the teams based on such factors as budget and need.

That’s a lot of frisbees.

By funding club sports more heavily than VSOs, the University is sending a clear message: It has no use for student-athletes who cannot compete at the DI level.

In the eyes of the University, VSO athletes do not contribute to the school. Unlike club cricket, frisbee or rugby, VSO teams do not bring another sport to the Athletic Department’s vast lineup of teams. Stanford already has a baseball team and a basketball team, so why should it fund another one?

This line of thinking is a mistake. VSOs are much more valuable to the University than club sports are.

VSOs are one of the best recruiting tools Stanford has to attract high school athletes. VSOs are full of players who were very good high school players, but not quite good enough to play for a DI school, especially for one as good as Stanford.

When these students apply to different schools, they have a choice to make. Do I go to a smaller school where I can continue playing the sport I love, or do I go to Stanford and completely stop playing?

VSOs offer a compromise — the ability to attend a school like Stanford and still compete in the sport you have been playing your entire life. I know I can’t speak for every VSO athlete, but I was seriously considering going to another school where I knew I could make the varsity baseball team. While club baseball isn’t the same as varsity college baseball, I still didn’t have to quit baseball cold turkey to attend Stanford.

Stanford’s actual club sports do not have this recruiting power. How many diehard cricketers or archers do you know whose college choice would be shaped by the existence of a club cricket or archery team? Probably none.

Yet, these are the teams who receive the most money from Stanford. Something doesn’t add up.

These club sports definitely contribute to the atmosphere of Stanford. How many campuses can you walk around and see students play taekwondo or rugby?

But to argue that they contribute more and are worth more than VSOs is irrational. Give VSOs the respect and funding they deserve and treat them as full-fledged club sports.
Mike Lazarus just lost any chance he ever had of making the Frisbee team. Console him at mlazarus “at” stanford.edu.ߴ