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OHIO Club Baseball Swings for Funding
By: Taylor Pacelli
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The Ohio University Club Baseball team became affiliated with club sports last year. Now, the boys are trying to work their way up a four-tier structure, where a team’s funding increases the longer they’re sanctioned as a club sport.
Ohio University’s Club Baseball Vice President Mason Grasselli said the lack of funding is an issue.
“The money the school gives us could be better but I guess we have to work for it, and we have a couple years until we get to where we want to be,” he said. “We didn’t get much funding from OU because of it being our first year.”
The National Club Baseball Association sometimes provides a stipend that allows the team to purchase equipment such as baseballs and bats.
But because the money received from the university and the NCBA isn’t much, team members must pay to play. Each year, teammates pay dues and fundraise for the team.
“Through our dues and other fundraisers we can pay for umpires and fields to play on,” Grasselli said.
FUNDRAISING
The team holds fundraisers with local businesses. They also created a GoFundMe page last year. Grasselli said the team does community service work too.
“Community service is required through club sports, so we have to earn five hours per person on our roster, and right now we are close to the 300 hours we need,” he said.
STUDENT-RUN
Club sports are entirely student-run which puts a lot of pressure on President Dalton Wright, who is trying to find more funding for his team:
“It’s tough, especially for a student-run organization,” he said. “I think club sports should definitely have more parameters giving us more funding or even distribution.”
Despite the funding problems, the team members said playing club baseball at Ohio University was the best decision they made because of all the friendship they have formed.