This story is featured in the Fall 2018 edition of the HPU Magazine. Learn how HPU club sports are an outlet for forming lasting friendships and helping students find their home at HPU.
With 33 club sports at HPU, students have the opportunity to do most anything – ride horses, throw a Frisbee, play soccer or climb into a 15-foot boat.
That’s what Kel Rickard did.
Before coming to High Point University from Georgia, Vermont, a tiny town beside Lake Champlain, she had never set foot in a boat known as an erg. But she’s now one of two coxswains on HPU’s club rowing team.
She’s the coach in a boat. At 5-feet-2, she’s constantly encouraging four male rowers more than a head taller than her to go faster.
“Prove it to High Point!” she’ll shout. “Prove it to me that you’re the best four in the water!”
She did just that last spring during a regatta in South Carolina. Her team won. “My boys,” she calls them. In a 2,000-meter race, they beat North Carolina State University, Wake Forest University, Clemson University and Duke University.
The thrill of competition attracts athletes like Rickard to join HPU’s club sports program. But that’s only the beginning.
Students involved in club sports discover a new family and life lessons they can use forever.
Lessons in Leadership
Emma Bourgraf and Pete Isler sense it every time they’re in a huddle.
It’s the importance of motivation.
That’s the name of the game.
Bourgraf plays soccer; Isler competes in Ultimate Frisbee. They’re both team captains, and in their roles, they’ve learned about leadership, time management, how to compromise, get along and resolve conflicts.
Bourgraf, a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, graduated in May with a degree in sales. She’s back in her hometown, working as a sales representative for Hive Networks, a company that focuses on the collaboration of doctors and hospitals to improve disease remission rates. And Bourgraf understands how playing four years of club soccer helped.
Same tools, she says, just on a different field.
“It gave me my college experience; it gave me everything,” Bourgraf says of club soccer. “I now know what I’m capable of.”
Last year, Isler wondered about that. As a captain, he had to speak with authority and confidence. But during his summer internships with a financial advisor, he found that difficult.
Every time the phone rang in the office outside New York City, Isler waited to answer it because he felt so inexperienced.
With time, though, he gained confidence
in the office — and on the field. He can tell when he huddles up his teammates and says without thinking, “Listen, we need to keep playing our game!”
Isler, a Presidential Scholar and junior finance major from Warren, New Jersey, grew because of ultimate frisbee. Patrick Greene grew, too.
He knows by an email — and the response from HPU President Dr. Nido Qubein.
Never Say Never
Greene, a long stick midfielder with HPU’s club lacrosse, knew he and his teammates needed new helmets when they got into a big-time tournament in April 2017.
But Greene didn’t want to travel to Annapolis, Maryland, with helmets of all colors. Greene wanted the team to get new helmets with one color — HPU Purple.
That’s when he thought of Qubein.
Greene emailed Qubein because he remembered Qubein’s lessons from the President’s Seminar on Life Skills for first-year students. In his email, Greene wrote that 21 new purple helmets would help with image, recruitment and motivation.
Greene sent the email on a Friday night. By daybreak, Qubein responded: “Sounds good. Let me check on it.”
A little over two hours later, Greene heard from Qubein. Greene’s team got new helmets. In his email, Qubein wrote: “I’m proud of you.”
“That felt good,” says Greene, a senior business administration major from Chester Springs, Pennsylvania. “I remember what Dr. Qubein said during the freshman seminars: ‘Don’t be afraid to ask; the worst thing you can hear is no.’”
The Power of Prayer and Connection
Cathy Schlaeppi sees riding a horse like bungee jumping. When you ride an animal that weighs 1,500 pounds, you learn to let go of your fears.
Schlaeppi should know. She owns Fox Run Farm, a 100-acre farm 10 minutes from campus. She’s also the coach of the HPU club equestrian team. She has 32 young women as members, and they participate in nine horse shows a year.
To be on the team, members have to volunteer, fundraise, market and write. As a result, they have grown closer in more ways than one.
Take the moment before a horse show. They circle up and pray.
So, the draw of HPU club sports is not just about the need to compete. It’s about much more.
“It’s about opportunity,” says Rickard, a senior psychology major. “It broadens your horizons. I mean, my best friends are from Ohio, Texas, Kentucky, New York and Florida. I wouldn’t have known them if it wasn’t for this sport that I didn’t even know existed.”