PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!
Sam What you just suggested was that Connecticut College buy UCLA equipment. If I was to call your Athletic Department and ask if they would be willing to give Conn some of their basketball travel budget for our basketball team to travel, I do not think they would take me seriously. This discussion is good and I feel for you. When I took this job 15 years ago we had 6 old boats and no budget. The school decided to support sailing and try to fund it at a higher level over time. This is a big issue in college sailing. We have schools that have decided to support sailing at a high level, other schools are supporting teams at the club level and some schools are not supporting sailing at all. The debate of the funded programs verse the small teams issue is getting old. Where do we go from here! I believe ICSA should hire a marketing group with the backing of US Sailing and offer initiatives to add VARSITY level Teams. US Water polo did this 4 years ago and offered $60 thousand dollar grants to schools over a 4 year period if they would add Water polo as a VARSITY sport. At the end of the 4 years the school had the choice to continue or not. The grant helped provide an infrastructure at the school. We added Water polo, 6 years later it still is a Varsity sport. It will be easy to shoot down my idea and say, where would we get the money? As an organization we need to have a group that is offering sailing as an option to Athletic Departments. We should not wait around for motivated students to help organize our club teams. The Mellon foundation funded two books over the past 8 years called (The Game of life and Reclaiming the game). These books take a hard look at sports on college campuses. All Divisions and all schools are cited in these books and one of the sports that came out looking good is sailing. Presidents, Deans, and Admissions directors around the country have these books as required reading. This is an opportunity to help all college sailing teams. We need to have a comprehensive plan. Presenting Sailing to Athletic Departments is not a new thing. Connecticut College asked Mike Horn and Hatch Brown to evaluate sailing on our campus in 1991. They came up with some suggestions to start the Camels down a path of fully funded status. The students in the early and late 80s did a great job getting the Conn team to a level where the Athletic Department had to decide what to do with them. ICSA should not wait around for schools to contact them, we should start knocking on doors and offering advice and counseling schools on how to start a team and how to upgrade your current team. If you delete or just shoot me down you are part of the problem. If the smart people out there could help to expand on my ideas we could get started this semester. Let's make an appointment with the UCLA administration! Sam If ICSA sent a team of advisors to UCLA to pitch sailing as a more funded sport would that help your cause?? ________________________________________________ icsa mailing list [email protected] http://www.collegesailing.org/mailman/?listname=icsa
