Angela Hidalgo is a freshman at BU in the College of Arts and Sciences, currently pursuing a pre-med track. Clearly, she has a lot on her plate academically, yet she still knew that joining a club team was something she wanted to do. And so she did, and her decision paid off.
Angela is a first-time rugby player who joined the Women’s Rugby team this past fall, never having played the sport before. She first heard about the team at the Splash activities fair hosted on Nickerson Field every fall. Splash is a great opportunity to learn about the clubs, teams, and other organizations on campus. Angela remembers this event, saying, “I was putting my e-mail down for a bunch of things, and I remembered my older friend played rugby in college and said she really enjoyed it, so I figured I’d put my name down, too.”
There is a huge variety of interesting and competitive club sports at Boston University, ranging from sailing to Kung fu, and everything in between. All of these unique sports are not likely to have an abundance of veteran players in the incoming freshman classes, as is the case for rugby. Many of the girls on the team come in with little to no experience playing the game, and that’s nothing to worry about.
“It was a little intimidating at first,” Angela recalls, “but there were other new people and the older girls understood that most people don’t play rugby before college, so there wasn’t a lot of pressure.”
When asked what the best and worst things about playing a club sport are, Angela had this to say: “The worst part about playing a club sport here is probably that the team doesn’t get much funding from the school, so the team has to do a lot of fundraising and we have to pay to be on the team. The best thing is that the team doesn’t practice for hours a day like a varsity team does, so the time commitment is much more manageable.”
However, despite the ups and downs of the team, Angela is still incredibly glad that she joined. Club teams are a great way to be part of a competitive and legitimate team, yet also enjoy the balance of having free-time and a life away from your sport. It’s really the best of both worlds. Plus, you get to meet and grow close to a great group of people that you might not have met otherwise.
So, should you try out a new sport here at BU if you haven’t already? Angela and hundreds of other student athletes would reply with a resounding, “Yes!”