Carolina Alumni Review - January/February 2007

Lend Us Your Young,Your Old,Your Fit,Your Fat

Carolina’s 53 sport clubs are as different as golf balls are from golf discs. Some of the 1,700 students involved in them compete against other schools every weekend, and others are focused more inwardly on skill building. Some, pictured in their softball, gymnastics or soccer uniforms, you’d take for the varsity Tar Heel teams if you didn’t know better.

There is baseball, tennis and swimming. There are four soccer teams, two per gender. The football team practices three times a week, plays every Sunday and has a policy that everybody who practices gets to play, regardless of skill level. Oddly, there’s no men’s basketball.

For the six to 10 golfers who will travel to play against about 13 other schools, “competitive experience is necessary.”

In Australian rules football, on the

other hand, “new players are always welcome, whether you’re young, old, fit, fat, Australian, American or anything else,” according to the Web site. “About the only requirement we have for our players and the Club is that your heart is still pumping blood to your brain. … Come out to training and start playing the best game in the world.”

The roller hockey B team develops talent for the A team. The women’s volleyball club requires a commitment to attend all practices and tournaments, fundraisers and other events.

While participants in many sports have to fund their own uniforms, members of the equestrian team should leave their horses at home — the school hosting the show provides.

Sport clubs Cheerleading candidates are
advised that they will not be
^players ^fromon the sidelines for varsity or
years past junior varsity games, but they
_recall _how _theymust demonstrate tumbling,
jumps, stunts and dance at try-
played the games outs — they took second place
_in _{Class Quotes,}in the intermediate division of
the National Cheerleading
^page ⁸⁴^.Association college nationals in
2005.

And what if you didn’t want to play, didn’t even want to cheer? The Carolina Officials Association sends referees to basketball and flag football tournaments throughout the Southeast.