By Cassidee Cline

May 5, 2009 | Utah State University's Club Sports is suspending its water polo club to try a swimming club for the 2009 fall semester.

Director of Intramurals and Club Sports Scott Wamsley said there are more possibilities with swimming since USU already has all the equipment needed for swimming meets including a scoreboard, start pads, diving blocks and a pool. Swimming would be a fun club to have, he said, and many students who use the HPER's pool at USU are asking whether or not USU is going to have competitive swimming.

Water polo is a pretty expensive sport to fund, Wamsley said. USU rations out about $2,400 a year to water polo and about $1,800 of the initial amount is given to the Collegiate Water Polo Association league, he said. The last $600 is for travel and pool fees, he said. It's almost a waste, he said, since participation for water polo has been dropping dramatically over the past couple of years.

The water polo club travels to Colorado for tournaments twice a year at a cost of just over $600 dollars round trip per year, Wamsley said. The cost of travel, league fees and fees to pay lifeguards during practice, he said, all adds up to be over $3,000 a year. For water polo to keep going student participation fees would have to be raised to cover the extra costs, he said. The swimming club wouldn't have to travel far to find other schools to compete against, he said.

Alix Court, English major, said USU has a lot of students out of high school who want to pursue their swimming skills and they practice religiously in the HPER's pool. It shows a lot of discipline, he said, and that's important for a team. Court said if a swimming club started he would try it out.

"Starting a new team takes a lot of effort," Court said. "It's an active process that won't happen overnight and it is going to take everyone who is involved to pull the club together."

Dr. Richard Gordin, a professor at USU who works in the HPER, said the pool opened in the early ‘70s and there was talk of starting a swim team, but nothing happened. Since then, only high school teams have used the pool for swimming meets, he said.

Water polo is a narrower sport compared to swimming, Gordin said. Swimming contains multiple events giving people more options. A swimmer has the opportunity to specialize in a specific event or stroke, he said.

"It would be a sport that is purely for the enjoyment of the students," Gordin said.

Scott Barnes, director of athletics, said the NCAA board of directors has discussed adding another women's program in accordance to Title IX of the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, and women's swimming is on the list.

Title IX states that any university has to give equal opportunity to both men and women, Barnes said. For example, he said, since USU has a men's football team and not a women's, it is balanced by giving out more sport scholarships to women or by having more women based teams such as softball, soccer and volleyball.

There is a "decision matrix" that helps decide which program would be best to add, Barnes said. One criterion needed for adding another program is participation, he said. Club sports are easier to transition into a NCAA team, he said, because student interest is already present. However, even if a program is being considered for the NCAA it's likely that it won't be added in the near future due to the budget cuts, he said.

Wamsley said the swimming club plans to interest students during USU's student orientations and during campus events such as Day on the Quad. If there is more interest in swimming than water polo, he said, Club Sports would keep swimming, but if there seems to be little interest Club Sports can always go back without any harm done. He said all the club will really need is a good leader.

"A club is only going to be as good as its leadership," Wamsley said.

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