Club sports give students the opportunity to compete in the sport they love that works with their schedules. There are 11 club sports at CSUSM, giving students a wide range to choose from.

Cheer, dance, baseball and wrestling are some of the clubs available. Students run all aspects, including finances and schedule.

Thanks to Desiree Godinez, Kassandra Zavala, Brittany Ward and Monique Lazaro, CSUSM has its first cheer club this semester. The girls were disappointed to find there was no cheer team on campus and decided to organize the club themselves.

“I have been doing cheer since I was 10 years old, so coming to this university that didn’t have cheer, I was [disappointed] Godinez said.  “I tried out for dance and I didn’t make it because I am not a dancer, I am a cheerer. I decided that I’m going to start a cheer team.”

“It was a lot of paperwork to go through and meetings with the athletic department. It was a lot of time to go outside of the school and compare other colleges with their teams and to see how to get to their level.”

Godinez hopes students will get involved with the club and exemplify CSUSM spirit through the cheer team.

Students also have the opportunity to support the dance club as well. President Michelle Fekete has been on the dance team for five years and the club’s president for two years. Her goal this season is to spread school spirit and for her team to attend a higher competition.

“This year is really to promote Cougar spirit, especially with the new Sports Center. Also we are trying to compete and go to nationals out in Florida,” said Fekete.

The dance team competed at a high level last year in the Open Dance Division of the USA Collegiate Dance Nationals held in Anaheim, CA, where over 30 college dance teams competed.

“[Last year] we did a great job of performing at basketball games and we also did compete, we got 4th at Nationals.”

There are at least 15 members on the dance team and the team will be performing at a lot of the women’s volleyball team. This will be a great opportunity to support the dance team and women’s volleyball at the new Sports Center.

Club wrestling has been on campus since the fall semester of 2013 and club president, Connor Shinn, is determined to get the club recognized throughout the community.

“It is year round sport, so we mainly have our competition season between late October to the beginning of March. Anytime between that we usually do fundraising … anyway to market our club especially to the public to let them know we are here and we intend to stay.”

Shinn has been a member of the wrestling club since the began at CSUSM and wrestled for San Pasqual High School in Escondido.  “It is a fun sport, I want to keep going with it for as long as I can.”

Another team on campus is club baseball. The program has been around for three years and the team hopes to get more students to recognize and support their club.

“[To] get our names out there because like every other sport, we love to see supporters, [but] it’s not always possible,” Club Treasurer, Eric Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez is in charge of finances, which can be tough at times since all clubs must raise enough money for their gear, travel and other necessities. “It’s pretty difficult, for some teams it’s easier than others but for the most part we stay at a really steady point that helps us. It keeps us going but we could always use more [money].”

Cougars, be sure to check out club baseball’s pre-season coming up this fall. A three-game weekend series will take place on campus against USC, Nov. 5 and Nov. 6., followed by a double-header against USD, Nov. 12.

Students at CSUSM have a wide range of club sports to support and participate in this year. For more information on club sports visit http://www.csusm.edu/rec/sport_clubs/clubs/index.html.