Club sports benefit from new board

As of last fall, The Allocable Fees Appropriation Board is no longer apart of the budgeting process for club sports organizations. The responsibility is now under the Club Sports Allocation Board or CSAB, and it has been working out in the club sports’ favor.

Board Advisor for CSAB Ryan McCallum said there is a huge difference between AFAB and CSAB.

“AFAB says ‘They’ve requested X amount of dollars. What do we need to cut?’,” McCallum said. “CSAB is teaching the student to fundraise with the club itself to ask for half of what they think they need.”

McCallum helps to educate the sports club program on decisions with CSAB and to help them create goals to meet. As an advisor for the budgeting process, he met individually with each club sport president to ask them important questions about what they needed for the year and also for the years to come.

“I basically went through the budget line by line,” McCallum said. “I asked ‘What are your goals for next year?’ and ‘What are your three-year, five- year, and ten-year goals for this program?’”

Now that CSAB is a decision body for club sports alone, McCallum also said it has helped greatly this past year to help equally distribute out the money each sport needs better than last year.

“It is a huge relief to have what we have, and we are all very appreciative of what we have, said McCallum. “We all know where we have come from to get to this point, and the clubs are very grateful to have what we have now.” 

Gina Goetzke, President of the Women’s Lacrosse Team, said that this year, her team requested $9632.20. With that requested, the team will receive over half of what they asked for, which is $5780. Goetzke said that this is the first time this has ever happened in women’s lacrosse history.

“Last year, our team received $1100.00 when we went through AFAB, and that is not enough for us to do much at all this year. I am looking forward to not have to worry about our budget like I am this year,”said Goetzke via email.

The sports team that did not get in their budget was the rugby team. Sam Gartmann, a sophomore and vice president of the club, said that there was confusion on the budget, but they have a solution.

“We are planning on multiple fund raising ideas and hoping for sponsorship through Anytime Fitness,”said Gartmann.

Tyler Halverson, chair of Sports Allocation Board on the Student Senate, said that last year under AFAB, they supported all sport clubs, student organizations and Falcon Programs. What happened last year, as Halverson explained, is that they received over $750,000 of requests with less that $350,000 to give to each. This year, they have $50,000 worth of funds to work with CSAB, and there is over $80,000 of requests.

“We had a lot of heavy cutting last year,” Halverson said. “It came back and really hit [AFAB] hard at the end of the year. Ultimately this was a good thing though, because it lead to the creation of CSAB.”

What is next to be done after the budgets have been reviewed and approved is to reflect on the past year and evaluate what they would like to do again next year and what they will do differently next year, McCallum said.

Goetzke was humble to hear about this year’s budget success and looks forward to the future with CSAB.

“If CSAB was not formed, I do not believe we would have these results. I hope that CSAB continues and the school can recognize the great things they are doing for sport clubs on campus.”