By Keiran Gorsky
A few people in the front row had to move their chairs back. The dreary quiet brought upon by all slideshows gave way to spirited chatter. Third-year civil engineering student and Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) club executive Shervin Akhlaghi—donning his blue belt on a night black gi—stood a few feet away from his sparring partner.
At the second town hall meeting for the recently founded recreational club, Akhlaghi and his fellow organizers attempted to garner student interest in the group, a necessity to become an official university club. Finally, Akhlaghi and his sparring partner bowed and collided on the mat. Almost celebrating the milestone of being recognized by the school…or not quite just yet.
The reality, of course, involves a little more bureaucracy. Starting a club at TMU is a complex process involving paperwork, funding assurances and plenty of scheduling of practices and meetings.
A peek at the current list of recreational clubs on the TMU website reveals an array of photos that might give the impression that a few students took over their local tennis court and declared themselves an entity.
The first step of starting a club is filling out an application form. Here, executives get to name their clubs, describe day-to-day activities, list their desired number of members, outline potential expenses and consider necessary equipment and facilities. TMU employs two coordinators who oversee recreational and competitive clubs respectively.
One recreational club getting off the ground this semester is the TMU Muay Thai Club, thanks in part to co-presidents third-year computer engineering student Sayeed Ahmed and fourth-year computer science student Mayank Kainth, who have been friends since high school. What started as a series of informal practice sessions with friends got them wondering whether other students would have a similar appetite for the mixed martial art.
“It just naturally came to be, to be honest,” said Ahmed.
In an effort to demonstrate school-wide interest, Ahmed spent Oct. 16 walking around campus collecting signatures. At the end of the day, he had roughly 100 student signatures which proved to be handy for securing funding from the Toronto Metropolitan Students’ Union (TMSU). According to the TMSU website, groups require 20 signatures from fulltime students to get started.
“To my surprise, many people were not only enthusiastic about joining but also interested in taking on executive roles,” said Ahmed.
According to Ahmed, the Muay Thai Club has been “soft-launching” this semester. They are hopeful for official recognition from the TMSU this winter, while they are not as far along with Recreation.
The school has three varieties of athletic clubs: recreational, competitive and varsity clubs. For competitive clubs, students don’t need experience but should be prepared to participate, learn and battle it out at select tournaments and events.
“All our recreational clubs are sort of self-sustaining”
According to the Athletics and Recreation site, competitive clubs aim “to create and facilitate access to competitive sport opportunities for TMU students in emerging and/or unaffiliated sports.” The TMU Bold website lists nine competitive clubs, including cricket, dragon boat and squash.
The site also lists 12 varsity clubs, which compete against other post-secondary teams at Ontario University Athletics (OUA) and U Sports levels of competition. The Athletics and Recreation site defines them as aiming for “sustainable access to competitive opportunities at the OUA and U Sports level.”
Ryan Danziger, competitive clubs coordinator for TMU Athletics and Recreation, told The Eye in an email that starting a competitive club is “no small feat.”
“It takes careful planning, strong student interest, securing space, dedicated leadership and a solid financial plan, all at least a year in advance,” he said. “The department is committed to ensuring they’re supported with the right risk management, financial, administrative and [human resources] backing.”
Recreational clubs—which BJJ and Muay Thai are vying to become—prioritize physical activity for the sake of socializing and being active. As TMU’s recreational club coordinator Randy Pipher puts it, “The word compete or competition is not the priority or even the thought, it’s more so bringing a group together, creating that community of students.”
While BJJ and Muay Thai continue to pursue becoming official clubs, they know there is a framework to work with. TMU’s Calisthenics Club and Taekwondo Club each started as official clubs this semester and are listed among 11 recreational clubs on the university’s Recreation & Active Wellbeing site.
The stakes might seem lower than for club teams, but recreational club executives still need to prove that the student population is interested.
Names on paper might be numerous but town halls provide something more tangible for club coordinators as proof of whether interest can be sustained long-term.
Pipher said club leaders use town halls to explain their goals and get a better measurement of “the actual commitment level” of those “dedicated to coming in.” Club executives and Athletics and Recreation can then determine what facilities and resources they will need based on the number of interested students.
Akhlaghi has hosted two town halls for BJJ this semester. There, he described the basic principles of the martial art before launching into a demonstration. He also explained where registration fees would go.
“Martial arts gyms…cost roughly $150-250 per month depending on what that gym has to offer,” Akhlaghi said. “Essentially, I am the main coach of the club, so that way, I will be able to cut down on the cost.”
Akhlaghi is charging students $50 per semester to participate, which goes towards expenses such as washing down mats and recruiting local instructors for guest seminars. According to Pipher, clubs at TMU are generally left to their own devices.
“Unfortunately we don’t have funds, so all our recreational clubs are sort of self-sustaining,” he explained. “They create funds…through registration fees or fundraisers.”
Competitive clubs may get some financial support and assistance with finding grants, fundraising opportunities and marketing materials from Athletics and Recreation, according to Danziger.
“Starting a new competitive club is a big task, especially when it comes to securing funding to run the club smoothly, safely, and sustainably,” he said in the email.
“Making a community around a common hobby”
Another option for bringing in the money they need to get started comes from the TMSU. The student union provides a maximum of $2,500 in funding for an affiliate group each academic year, which includes athletic clubs as of September 2022, as previously reported by The Eyeopener. According to their policy manual, requests for athletic group funding go through the union’s Athletics Committee.
Another important part of the process for any club looking to kick things off is to write a constitution, which outlines the rules for the club and its members to abide by. Though Recreation provides a template clubs can work from, Pipher said the student leaders ultimately create the constitutions and decide “what is best for their specific group.”
“If we have a question, or have a concern or a member within their club has a concern, we fall back onto, ‘OK, what did we put in the constitution to answer those questions?’” he explained.
Akhlaghi explained that the BJJ constitution mostly describes how funding would be allocated, as well as safety rules. He said he followed the template provided by Athletics and Recreation, then added his own expertise such as adding a point to match up people similar in weight to limit injuries.
“I just tried to follow that and keep it close to that required constitution,” said Akhlaghi.
The next step, Pipher explained, is finding a place to practice. He said there can be challenges finding an ideal space and time slots because of all of the recreational activities—including intramurals, drop-ins and clubs—that take place at facilities such as the Recreation and Athletic Centre (RAC) or Mattamy Athletic Centre (MAC).
Where clubs like BJJ and Muay Thai can be allotted space on campus, Pipher explained that others like the TMU Climbing Club or the Tennis Club have to meet at private venues where specialized equipment and facilities are available. Climbing Club sessions, for example, take place at Basecamp Climbing, a rock climbing gym on Bloor Street.
The TMU Rowing Club, which was recognized officially as a competitive club by the school in late October, faced an especially difficult challenge. They had to find a place for outdoor and water-bound training, faced high costs for equipment and had to fill out the appropriate paperwork.
According to club executive and fourth-year real estate management student James Clements and founding executive and second-year biology student Orah Otis, the club raised $10,000 in private funds to cover costs this year. Otis said student members pay $1,000 in membership fees, which cover equipment and coaches.
Even though all members were TMU students, the club was prepared to compete under the banner of Hanlan Boat Club—a private rowing club in the Port Lands where they practiced —and had recruited Hanlan coach Eric Szonyi to oversee the club. As a joke, the team ordered mock TMU merchandise that read ‘Dold’ instead of ‘Bold’ on the front.
It was the night before the 2024 OUA Regatta at Martindale Pond in St. Catherines, Ont. that the team received an email from Danziger, which said they were “good to go.”
Representing Hanlan-TMU, six members of the rowing team competed in two events at the regatta. The club will continue under the TMU banner and will use the university’s facilities. They are set to host an info session on Nov. 25 at the MAC, “discussing how this partnership will work going forward, and what this next year of rowing holds,” according to a post on the TMU Rowing Instagram.
For the executives responsible for the grunt work of club formulation, the effort is worth it despite how cumbersome the process is. At the town hall, Akhlaghi spoke about how BJJ gives him a mental health break from his busy course load. He mentioned scrolling through the TMU subreddit and being bombarded with posts bemoaning a sense of loneliness commonly felt at school.
“There’s a lot of negativity on social media, you know? People are lonely,” he said. “A lot of it comes from the lack of socialization in [TMU] being a commuter school.”
Akhlaghi is starting the BJJ club not just because it’s fun but because it brings people together.
“That’s what I’m trying to achieve here,” Akhlaghi explained. “Making a community around a common hobby.”
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