Courtesy Lauren Camp Senior pitcher Mollie Cain starts her windup during a game against Prince George’s Community College in late February.

Jessica Cotter (COL ’04) and Emily Beck (COL ’04) started hitting softballs before they finished the first grade. Now Georgetown’s club softball team president, Cotter said that when she started college here, she was very excited to hear that the team might become a varsity sport by her sophomore year. Vice president Beck said she always thought she’d play varsity for at least a year before her graduation.

But with only a few months left on the Hilltop, Cotter, Beck and the rest of the senior players know they won’t have the chance to hit, pitch and run the bases as varsity Hoyas. While both say they still love the game and their team, they have also felt a building frustration that their hopes were not realized. “It got to the point that I kept getting excited about varsity, with any rumors that it was coming,” Cotter said. “But when that dream keeps dwindling, you get less excited.”

And facing another season without the benefits of varsity status, the team gears up for their second competition this season knowing they will have to stretch limited resources once again. Beck said the most precious of these resources, for softball and all club sports, is practice space. Softball players face an especially difficult task, as Georgetown has been without a baseball field since the construction of Lot T four years ago.

“Basically we just literally just look for the fields we can,” Beck said. “We’ll go to Volta Park and just practice there, but when the Little League starts up, we often get kicked off early because they take precedence, and the community is not incredibly supportive toward us. We found one other field, by Rock Creek Park on P Street, which is a little less crowded, but it’s more of a trek.”

Beck said Yates Field House does not offer the facilities they need, as the team has been asked to leave even when using soft, rubber balls for throwing practice on some of the courts. The chance to practice on Kehoe field or along its fringe is also rare. “I know all rugby, club soccer, all the other club teams fight for it. When you can’t even get that little patch of grass, it’s annoying,” she said.

Softball team treasurer Lee Barnes (COL ’04), who has played since her sophomore year, said that the team has been able to negotiate with the baseball team and use the one remaining batting cage at the corner of Lot T for weekly hitting practice. “But we’re never sure if our practices will work with their practices from one year to the next,” Barnes said. “We’re subject to everyone else’s demands first, which is one of the frustrations of the situation.”

David Vaughan, director of Club Sports agreed that securing practice space usually creates the most difficulties for a club team. “It is the same problem that most of the student groups, like performing arts, face on campus,” Vaughan said. “It’s an urban campus, and space is tight.”

Vaughan said that club sports are a young program, first officially recognized by the university in 2000. While unofficial teams existed for many years earlier, Vaughan said that incorporating club sports as a department within the Center for Student Programs helped the program grow. “Financially, you get funding, but you also have access to some of the space that individuals on campus don’t necessarily have, plus any copying, computers, faxing and such that other student organizations can access,” Vaughan said.

Still, even with university support, Vaughan said club sports teams need to be quite self-sufficient to survive, relying on membership dues, alumni donations and fundraising to cover the greater part of their expenses. Teams must prepare a budget proposal every year, and the Advisory Board for Club Sports determines funding based on each programs needs and size. This year, Barnes said the softball team was allocated $1,000 from the Center for Student Programs, with dues and fundraising bringing the total budget to $3,800. According to Beck, the dues are $150 a year for a new player and $125 for a returning player. “That’s still a lot of money to pay to play,” Beck said. “Especially when you think about how varsity gets everything paid for, all the arrangements taken care of.”

Barnes said that increased financial support is just one benefit players receive from moving to a varsity team. “A lot of us would like the higher level of competition varsity offers,” she said. Right now, the team plays other club teams, and occasionally varsity teams from local community colleges, but Barnes said that there are many schools nearby hosting the varsity teams that could offer more intense competition. Neighboring campus George Washington University, for instance, moved their women’s softball team varsity this year.

Varsity status, Barnes said, would also elevate the level of competition by allowing the team to recruit. “We would be able to bring in stronger players. Right now we are subject to using whoever comes in, which is why we’ve been lacking pitchers for the past few years,” she said.

“One of the things that needs to come back to the Georgetown campus is the school spirit. Having us as varsity could create more spirit, gets the players and fans more excited about our school,” Cotter added.

Cotter said that like the varsity baseball team, which practices at Cabin John Regional Park in Bethesda, Md., they often have to travel 45 minutes to play “home” games. Renting vans for travel adds to other expenses, including renting fields at community colleges or parks like Cabin John, and umpires. While the team always tries to schedule doubleheaders to get the most play time in for their travel time, Cotter said the distance is still a hassle, and discourages other students from supporting the sport as fans.

But Beck also said the softball team does have one thing which makes their small budget, travel troubles and field hunting a little easier to handle: their coach. Richard Brown, a Maryland resident, started coaching the team about six years ago, before the team was even recognized by the university. Brown got involved with a friend whose daughter played on the team. When the girl graduated, his friend quit. Brown stuck around, volunteering his time to help players improve.

“He doesn’t get paid, so he’s just doing this out of his kindness,” Beck said, “We appreciate him so much.” She said Brown has contacts at Prince George’s Community College who help the team secure game space there, offers his van for transportation and even chips in for pizza during team meetings.

Yet even with Brown’s generosity, players said they still always hoped for a varsity team, becoming more worried with the Bush administration’s decision last fall to have a federal review committee re-examine Title IX, the law that requires gender equity in any school which receives federal funds. According to an article printed last December in USA Today, Bush’s campaign to make rules of gender proportionality in athletics more flexible left many supporters of women’s sports suspicious that the new investigation meant cutbacks for women’s teams. Barnes, for instance, said she wondered if this review might put a hold on adding more varsity women’s teams like softball. Georgetown, however, has actually continued expanding women’s sports opportunities. Current figures from the athletic department show that the school with 12 men’s teams, 13 women’s teams and one coed team after the university added a women’s varsity golf team three years ago.

Cotter said that while she and other softball players enthusiastically support the golf team, they do worry that the even more tightly stretched budget might make varsity softball an even more unrealistic dream. “Of course, we have no objections to the girls’ golf team. I think that it’s great to have more women playing varsity sports, but sometimes you just wish there was the money or space to expand that to us,” Cotter said.

“I was shocked when I first came here and found out that Georgetown did not have a team in the first place,” Barnes said. Indeed, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations’ yearly athletic participation survey, softball is the fourth most popular sport for female athletes. Of the top five most popular women’s sports, softball is the only one for which Georgetown does not support a varsity team.

Yet, in a letter to the donors in the athletic campaign sent this September, Athletic Director Joe Lang stated that the athletic department plans to hire a coach for women’s softball during this year. The letter adds, however, that significant donor support is needed from alumni and donors to field the team in time for the 2004-05 school year. Both Lang and Director of Development Dave Sears declined to comment about the progress of this development at this time.

Barnes said that while she and the other senior players would be disappointed at so closely missing the chance to play varsity, they would be very supportive of adding a varsity team soon. “We’ve got a strong squad of underclassmen players who could really develop a program, should it happen,” she said.

And despite all the frustrations they faced during their time on the team, the senior players said they do not regret joining. They are still happy to have the opportunity to play. Both Beck and Cotter said that with the goal of varsity status out of reach for this year, they focused instead on fostering the team’s spirit and togetherness, throwing pasta parties and planning a team sleepover at Beck’s parents’ home in New Jersey for an end-of-season tournament.

“We’ve got a lot of great younger players, so we want them excited about the team, to keep playing,” Beck said. “That’s the legacy we can leave.”