Where Did The Clubs Go?

Todd Fernandez
November 17, 2011
Filed under Feature

By Todd Fernandez

You walk into the cafeteria and you see club booths set up all around.  The club fair is going on, and you sign up for your favorite clubs intending to pursue your interests.  At first, you here about one or two meetings.  Then, a few months later, there are fewer and fewer and then finally none.  You ask why?  What happened to my club?

The problem about Bishop Kelley’s clubs is not the total amount of clubs, but the amount that have become complacent.  During the start of the year, we have the club fair to sign up with a variety of clubs.  But in reality, most of these clubs become dormant.

“I joined equestrian club last year, but we really didn’t have any meetings,” junior Caroline Gerow said.

“I joined improv troupe,” said junior Aaron Alonso, “and I don’t know what ever happened to that.”

The problem with this dilemma lies in the members and organizers of the groups.

“Because people don’t follow through with a group, they won’t have a group,” junior Andrew Wood said.

According to the Dean of Student Activities Gary Oberste the problem with clubs is “there’s not enough momentum behind [them].”

“Clubs usually won’t make it if they’re not strong enough or don’t have enough kids, unless they are really passionate about it,” Oberste said.  “Chess club comes and goes.  They would go to class competitions and get scholarships, and then it just went down.  Clubs just come and go.”

The major solution to solving the problem is just by getting more people involved in the clubs.  People can do this by getting their friends to join the club, and then their friends to join the club and so on.

“Kids would get their friends to join the clubs and then it would just build on from there,” Oberste said.  “The biggest things for a club are interest and friends.”

Junior Jake Pruitt admitted that he, “wouldn’t join a club if any of [his] friends weren’t in it.”

One club that still continues to go strong is the ultimate frisbee club.  The club was created by seniors Katelyn Whitt and Rachel Skrovina.

Skrovina believes the success of her club is due to the fact that “so many people are involved in it and people always want to play.”

Another group that continues to grow is the drumline.  Though it is not technically a club, drumline still qualifies as a group because it is a cluster of people who come together for a common interest.

Senior Andrew Alonso said he “always loved music and always wanted to play the drums.”

Alonso joined when “it was new and no one really knew about it.”  Now that it has become increasingly popular, “it grows every year,” Alonso said.

The common fear the most people have is that their friends won’t be in the club they want to join.  Aaron Alonso offered words of encouragement to those people.

“You’ll make new friends along the way,” said Aaron Alonso.  “You’ll find relationships with people who you might have not met otherwise.  Just do what you want.”