Club volleyball impeded by NCAA bylaws

By Troy Simpson

Santa Clara women's volleyball club members are unable to make their group an officially recognized club sport because athletics officials say that doing so could jeopardize National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) regulations for the existing Division I women's volleyball team.

"I tried all of last year to get the club to be a competitive club sports team through Malley and to be able to schedule games and even to compete in the nationals," said club founder and vice president Holli Ogle. "They basically just told me no."

Although some members of the women's volleyball club tried to become a recognized club sport last year to compete with teams from other schools, Associate Athletic Director for External Services Richard Kilwien said that NCAA bylaws make that very difficult.

"Any financial aid that any student athlete receives counts towards the allowable aid that NCAA allows you to have. Basically, they put a cap on how many scholarships you can give per sport," said Kilwien. "If we had club volleyball and a person on the club volleyball team got an academic scholarship, that counts toward our [allowable] aid."

The NCAA bylaw that governs the ability of club teams to form is bylaw 15.5.1.1, which states that student-athlete's participating in a club sport and receiving financial aid count against a university's overall number of scholarships allocated to student athletes. Club athletes with academic scholarships would limit the amount of varsity scholarships.

Associate Athletics Director Desiree Reed-Francois said that the NCAA considers many kinds of financial aid athletically related, and therefore countable towards the team limits. The reason for doing so, Reed-Francois said, is to prevent universities from keeping extra varsity players on club teams as reserves.

If a student on a women's club volleyball team received athletically related aid, she would add to the overall NCAA limits of the existing varsity team and possibly break NCAA regulations, said Reed-Francois.

"We absolutely support club sports, we just want to give the [varsity] women's volleyball team every chance to succeed," said Reed-Francois. "The genesis of the rule is that [the NCAA] doesn't want schools to cheat and have a junior varsity team. We want to support women in any sport, but we don't know how to make [the team] work."

Commissioner for the Northern California Collegiate Volleyball League Gary Colberg said that various institutions interpret the NCAA bylaws differently.

He said that it's not the NCAA policy that stands in the way but rather the institutions interpretation of it.

"The NCAA is trying to prevent stashing, but that's really jeopardizing and penalizing the average student that wants to play volleyball," said Colberg.

Colberg added that the school's interpretation of the bylaw is unfair to those women that hope to play.

"I don't see what the big deal is," said Colberg. "For the normal run of the mill undergrad that just wants to play club volleyball, why should they be prevented? It seems like no one is really going to bat for the normal student."

Ogle began the club last year through the of Associated Students (AS) as a prerequisite requirement to become a club sport recognized by the Department of Athletics and Recreation.

The 2002-2003 women's volleyball club officers received a letter in August from former Assistant Director of Athletics Kevin Price, informing them that the group would not be granted the status of club sport.

In the letter, Price said that the reasons why they were denied a club sport title included a university "general policy against formation of any further club teams because of concerns regarding space availability," and "the materials presented [by the club] and later approved by the AS indicated that the group would compete with other students within the university."

Price said in the letter that the NCAA "requires any sort of athletically-related financial aid received by members of club teams at a university to count against varsity team limitations."

Despite her desire to form a team, Ogle said that the struggle might be too great to take on during her senior year.

"I don't have the time and energy to fight with anyone about it anymore and we haven't really gotten much positive reinforcement and support from the university," she said.