UW-Milwaukee Sports Clubs Face Staff Transition

With the growing popularity of sports clubs on the UW-Milwaukee campus, student athletes in University Recreation sport clubs and intramural sports alike face a significant faculty transition with the sendoff of former sports club coordinator Nick Tasich.

University Recreation, or URec, has started off this current school year with two brand new sport club supervisors with Skyler Harmon working with finance and Brandon Altenburg focusing on Outreach and getting student athletes heard.

The club coordinator position is important to guarantee that student athletes on campus can have the experiences at sporting meets that they do. The coordinator organizes practice times, financial needs, travel expenses and any equipment required for each individual club.

“It’s a nice contrast from last year when every club was overseen by Nick, by one person, now there’s like there is someone who is more concerned with your club so it’s a little more personable,” added Thomas Jones, the Sports Club Leadership Committee Vice President, from his spot besides Chloe Rogers, the SCLC president, at the front of the classroom after their annual meeting.

The UW- Milwaukee Sports Club Leadership Committee, composed of board members, club officers and club secretaries alike, met in the tight room of the Klotsche Center the night of Nov. 2, to discuss among club officers any current standing issues with traveling policies, van and bus rentals and recent news from each club. Members of UWM Sport Clubs from across campus hurried to file into a small classroom located on the bottom floor past the locker rooms with many of them quickly taking the seats furthest from the front table.

After Harmon helped guide Rogers through concerns about where to find, turn in, and utilize the newly required travel binders and who to turn in bank history and receipts, Harmon and Altenburg left the room to allow for officers to discuss personally amongst themselves anything that the students felt needed changing.

The meeting began with a call to order, followed by a roll call to determine that at least one officer from every sport club on campus had attended. Immediately following roll call and the approval of the agenda, many officers quickly raised their hands to direct many questions about their current travel mishaps and hotel and van booking issues.

Within moments from beginning with the meeting agenda, one officer quickly ran in carrying a few boxes of cookies from Insomnia Cookies on North Avenue before exiting to return back to work.

Rogers, a second year Girl’s Lacrosse member, directs the Sports Club Leadership Committee board, or SCLC. This is her first year being in charge of the SCLC.

“What’s nice is it feels like you have someone that is dedicated specifically to your club,” said Rogers.

Jones alongside with Rogers and the SCLC Treasurer Joseph Pederson lead the monthly meetings at the K for the club officers. Pederson had been the sole SCLC officer who was unable to attend this night’s meeting. Harmon, alongside of moderating the annual meetings and supervising half of the UWM sports clubs, is the head advisor for the Sport Club Finance Committee. Harmon introduce the topics of discussion for Rogers and Jones to introduce from the agenda and guide the discussion questions. He reminded officers of the up and coming deadlines.

Altenburg, the second hired coordinator, works closest with both the SCLC board and the Sport Club Outreach committee. The Outreach committee’s primary task is to boost awareness of sport club success both on campus and online.

“We primarily work with the three exec board members Chloe, Tommy and Joe,” said Altenburg. “Skylar and I coming in, we’re at like five months right now so they’ve been a good resource to help us out. I hope we can give them some good ideas to help improve the program.”

Altenburg’s goal is to increase student involvement, both inside of university recreation and sport clubs, but also through his outreachcommittee.

“Tommy has a lot of good ideas; he’s also on the Outreach committee so he has that committee up,” said Altenburg. “I like giving students the ability to travel and compete, and I like our student staff that goes out there and works with intramural participants and sport clubs at practices and games. Being out there and involved with the sport and helping run those events is pretty cool for, you know, everyone to do with their weekends and their nights.”

The open forum discussion without the paid faculty present in the room gave students the chance to speak their minds and direct any of their concerns with how the sports clubs are being run to the SCLC and their fellow peers.

The room unanimously agreed that utilizing the rental vans, both the method to rent them along with the actual vans, was currently the biggest pain for all of the sport clubs.