Wanted: Women Athletes

Substitutions and extra players a re almost non-existent on 2008 JSC women’s fall sports teams. There are exactly three extra players aggregated from all of the women’s teams that JSC fields during the fall season. All three are members of the soccer team. To comply with NCAA standards, next fall JSC will add a women’s volleyball team. The addition will give the Badgers four fall women’s sports teams: tennis, cross-country, and the aforementioned soccer and volleyball.
Currently, the tennis and cross country teams have exactly the amount of team members required to compete, with no extra athletes to make up for injury or other reasons if someone is not to compete. The addition of another women’s team creates logistical problems. A volleyball team cannot compete with less than six players and North Atlantic Conference (NAC) teams typically have nine to twelve active members. The soccer team has only fourteen members while most NAC schools have sixteen to eighteen players. In comparison to other NAC members, JSC falls behind in membership despite relative equality in enrollment.

JSC Athletic Director Barbara Lougee says this year is a “glitch” and that many more female athletes signed up to play than actually showed up for preseason practices. She said the soccer head coach “Brian Buczek had a list of 25 students who were committed and … eight of them decided last minute, ‘I don’t think so,’ for whatever reason.” She also explained that normally women’s tennis is much more popular, but a change in head coaches lead to a “lull” year in participation, but the new head coach is “very popular in the state” and should result in greater recruitment numbers for next year.

The decision to add women’s volleyball and its abundance of roster spots was influenced by many factors. According to Lougee, “A big factor here is space and climate.” The difficulties associated with adding a spring sport due to weather and the resulting brevity of the season outweighed the convenience of competing with only softball for potential athletes. The debate over what sport to add was also influenced by conference need. “Our responsibility as an institution was, as far as ADs are concerned, what [teams] we all need to enhance our conference,” said Lougee. Currently, JSC is the only member of the NAC without a women’s volleyball team. Also, volleyball is growing in popularity in the state of Vermont.

According to NCAA.org, by August 1, 2010, all affiliated colleges and universities with over 1,000 students enrolled must field at least six men’s and women’s sports teams. JSC currently has five of each. In addition to women’s volleyball, men’s golf will be added. JSC decided to begin the new sports teams in 2009 to create a buffer year to guard against roster spots not being filled and therefore not being able to field a team. To prevent that from happening, Lougee says that a head coach will hopefully be in place by Spring ‘09 in order to work with admissions and recruit potential athletes for next fall.