The Beginning

As a continuation of my second blogpost, where I told you how I came to build a handball team, in this blogpost "The Beginning" I want to tell you about the next steps and how it went on. In Germany we have a saying: "Aller Anfang ist schwer", which means every beginning is hard and describes this part very well.

On November 1st I made my final decision to stay at SUNY Cortland for a second semester. This was very important and necessary at this point because otherwise I would not have been able to start planning for the next semester. After coming up with the idea of forming a team, I went to the sport club office to find out more about the process. Since all sport club programs (the intramural program and the intramural league) at SUNY Cortland are organized through the sport club office, there was only one place to go - the sport club office. As I told you before, I kept asking people in person instead of emailing them because it was faster and I could ask follow-up questions. When I walked into the office of the Assistant Director of Sports Clubs and asked about the possibility of doing something club related with Team Handball, he was very open and supportive. He told me that I could start a club and that SUNY Cortland used to have a women's team handball club. They won the 2008 college national championship. However, the deadline was coming up, so I had to apply for a sports club quickly. So I jumped into the cold water thinking now or never. There were a few things we/I had to do in order to submit our application and get approved as a club, such as interest meeting, projecting and planning, and writing a constitution. The first and most important thing was to find enough people who were potentially interested in joining the club.

The first Interest Meeting in November.

For this reason, I held an interest meeting four days later, on November 8th. The purpose of this interest meeting was to see how many people were generally interested in Team Handball as a club opportunity and to convince them to join the club next semester. In order to be approved, there had to be at least 10 SUNY Cortland students who would be interested in joining the team handball club if it were to be successfully formed. At this interest meeting, 17 students showed up, 13 of whom I hadn't seen before and only came because of the sport. I presented my ideas and plans for the future of team handball at SUNY Cortland. You can find parts of the presentation in this blog post. It helped a lot to get the necessary signatures and also to find people who want to work with me on this project. As with the meeting, I was trying to start a club by myself. Afterwards, I found or convinced three more people to be part of the board as vice president, treasurer, and secretary if the club were to be successful. I was just happy to have them and support my project, so I told them:" It is not a lot of work in the first semester" - what a lie. In retrospect, it was fortunate that I arranged it that evening, as it would have been much harder to find them at the gym or anywhere else over the next few days.

Parts of the slides I used for the first interest meeting. You find the link for what is handball here.

The key question of the evening was:

How do I motivate people for something they don't really know?

Team handball is not very common in the US at the college level, and most of the students had never played a real game. Some students came because they played it in high school in their gym class and they enjoyed it. Team handball in physical education classes is very different from regular team handball in terms of body contact and the way the game is played. Therefore, recruiting people was linked to raising awareness of the sport and getting students/people involved in team handball. This is definitely something to think about when you start recruiting. How do you lower the barriers for new students/rookies to try the sport and join your team?

With 40 signatures - 4 board members - 1 advisor, we were able to apply as a new sports club in the SUNY Cortland Sport Club Program. Having 40 signatures is good, but do they actually join the club? No. Of those 40 signatures, 3 were actually active club members the following year - recruiting never stops.

The application process for the Cortland Handball Club was an expedited way to start a club because of the deadline and my limited time at SUNY Cortland. However, the college program usually plans with a semester to prepare and organize everything for the application. This makes it easier and spreads the work out over a longer period of time. Still, I would definitely do it the same way again. If you want to get an overview of the required documents, you can follow this link to the sports club application form used by SUNY Cortland.

Successfully getting people on the board and getting signatures meant writing a constitution, answering the project and planning questions, and presenting the club at the next Sport Club Advisory Board Meeting on November 29th in order to be recognized by the Sport Club Program. At the Sports Club Advisory Board meeting, all sports club presidents attend and vote on whether or not to approve the club. So I prepared all the application materials, had the final meeting with the Assistant Director of Sport Clubs, and submitted our documents by November 17th. In my next posts, you will learn more about planning and projecting, budgeting, writing a constitution, and presenting your club ideas.

Are you thinking of starting a club?