Lindsay Son

Team sports had never been part of my life until they became the only constant in my college experience.

Sports are embedded in American schools in a way they are not almost anywhere else. My international high school offered only three sports. With only an hour a week, playing time amounted to little more than a weekly scrimmage. Rather than learning the consistent behaviors that make a good athlete and teammate, our engagement with sports was merely about the outcomes. Thus, I found in sports only a place for winners and losers and completely missed the in-between. My very few classmates who became “athletes” relied on private coaching. I learned to see myself as someone who simply was not an athlete, rather than someone who never had the opportunity to become one.

But things changed in college: I discovered club sports and the “all skill levels” catchphrase, but most importantly, the opportunity to discover parts of myself that only team sports could teach me. I first experienced the tears of joy after proving to yourself that you can go beyond where you thought you could, the consistency of starting every day with an awareness of the body, the unconditional support of a team that is loudly cheering for your growth and the frustration of seeing the numbers stagnate after a streak of constant PRs. With my involvement in club sports, I experienced feelings that I never had in any other environment, and I discovered new sides of my character and skills that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. It is never too late to begin a sport and find something meaningful in it.

With all the joys club sports brought me, they also showed me how often late-blooming athletes are left behind within the same teams that allow them to participate. For an institution that so heavily values equal access and opportunity, Bowdoin falls short when it comes to club sports.

What “all skill levels” often leaves out is that some prior athletic experience is a substantial advantage in finding your place on a club team and participating fully. Rowing, for example, has a stellar learn-to-row program, but the vast majority of the team played an endurance sport in high school. The challenge is not only that new athletes enter at a disadvantage; the structure of the team itself is also becoming more competitive. Bowdoin Rowing has historically provided a relatively accessible entry point into competitive athletics, but the team’s announcement this past summer that it would introduce “athletic standards” for spring racing is making the club increasingly resemble the varsity programs to which it once offered an alternative.

This is less a failure of intent than it is a tension between priorities. The same competitive structure that makes club sports sustainable can also limit the opportunities they provide to less experienced athletes. Being competitively successful allows teams to gain the recognition that ultimately justifies the funding that is necessary to sustain the teams in the first place.

Yet as a team’s competitive ambitions increase in priority, the opportunities available for athletic development can become increasingly uneven across skill levels. From a coach’s standpoint, being competitive requires strategic judgment about athletes’ potential and selective choices about where limited time and energy yield the greatest return. Those choices may be rational from a competitive standpoint, but they also mean that the athletes who have the most to gain from additional opportunities are often the least likely to receive them.

In a world where privately supported athletics prevent many from participating, college-funded club sports offer an opportunity to experience the benefits of athletics without requiring competitive experience. Bowdoin club sports are generally welcoming in the sense that students can join the roster without having to try out. Yet, many competitively allocate opportunities for playing time, racing, travel and, most importantly, coaches’ feedback. Being on the roster does little to close the opportunity gap when the most skilled athletes receive the most opportunities to improve. New athletes deserve a space to grow, and when club sports take competition too seriously, they sacrifice the accessibility they promise.

Camila Eljuri is a member of the Class of 2027.