Why Athletics Should Be In Our Community Colleges

By Rondale Williams

Staff Writer

Football players at Shasta College football practice.

Photo by Michael Hendrix

How athletics could affect the community college atmosphere in Connecticut in the areas of student life and campus diversity.

Look around the campus of Housatonic Community College at around 5 p.m. What is happening? Virtually nothing that resembles that of an actual college campus. There is no school spirit, campus involvement from students, or real attractions to keep students on campus for that matter.

There is a way to fix this problem however, if we added interscholastic athletics to the extra-curricular activities not only at Housatonic, but at all Connecticut community colleges. Maybe it would entice students to want to be more involved with campus activities because the interest in sports would either get students involved directly with playing these sports, or watching athletic competitions after school.

This is a community college after all, and most people in Connecticut probably have no clue that there are community colleges out there that actually have athletics. In states like New York, California, Texas, Mississippi, Kansas, and a few others, there are community or junior colleges that have full fledged athletic departments.

As a matter of fact, I myself participated in junior college football at a point in time, coming out of high school because I wasn't a very highly recruited football player of course. Factors like playing on a terrible high school team caused many guys on our football team to be overlooked when college coaches were recruiting. That caused me to look for an alternative to playing at a four-year institution and try and walk on to a football team. When I did, I found a junior college in California named Shasta College. The school was exactly what I was looking for and had everything a four-year college did, including dorms and almost every main stream sport imaginable like basketball, football, soccer, and volleyball, just to name a few.

There was also an awesome fan base in the town of Redding, Calif., where the school was located. Fans constantly asked us when games were and how we thought our season was going to turn out. Our teams would travel in-state to different community colleges and rivalries were big with many of the nearby colleges, much like you see with major Division 1 athletics. Just like big time football programs, kids from all over the country would come and play at our school in different sports. On our football team alone we had kids from as far away as Georgia and Connecticut, creating a truly diverse campus that only students at four-year universities enjoy.

I also remember college coaches from the likes of big football schools, like California and Oregon State, would even attend our games to recruit players to play at their universities. For example, on our team alone we had a wide receiver go to the University of California Berkeley on a football scholarship, and Jason Sehorn, the former New York Giant, played at Shasta and continued his college career at the University of Southern California.

Now imagine that same atmosphere at not only Housatonic, but at all community colleges in Connecticut. Wouldn’t it excite you to cheer for our school’s football team at a game on Saturday night? Or do we want to stick with the status quo, and just have a table tennis club? Maybe by implementing athletics we can give those student athletes in high schools that weren’t highly sought after on the recruiting trail the chance to play again and earn an athletic scholarship.

Our community colleges can even become a refuge for college players that may have had a troubled past at four-year universities. For example, look at the Cam Newton story and how he had gotten into trouble at the University of Florida for stealing laptops there after his first season. His sophomore year he left the university and went on to star at Blinn Community College in Texas, and was highly recruited by many schools, such as Auburn University. Then he later received a second chance to resume his Division 1 football career at Auburn and led them to a national championship this year. Maybe Connecticut community colleges can one day offer a second chance for a fallen athlete, just like the Texas community college offered Cam Newton a second chance.

Not only can we offer the opportunity for students to play sports and hopefully one day prosper in the field of athletics, but offering athletics can help the community college system prosper financially. As we all know, sports like football and basketball are big money makers for colleges and maybe we can draw some of that money into colleges like Housatonic with the implementation of athletics. At Shasta, for example, our student cafe profited greatly by selling food and snacks at games. The money from athletic donors also helped Shasta College create dorms to house student-athletes from out of state, as the dorms were not directly funded by the college itself.

With athletics we also offer the student body entertainment and give them a reason to want to stay around the campus. As I stated before one too may times I see students run out of class, run to their cars and head home. Not to say that students wouldn’t still head straight home, but maybe they would have a reason to come back to campus. If, say, Housatonic was playing Gateway Community College in a big basketball game. Many times at Shasta we had students go home the same way here at Housatonic. But many students and Redding residents would come back, if they knew we were playing our rivals College of the Siskiyous, or Laney College out of Oakland. Those games were big; whether in the football stadium or field house, students would pack the stands to see those games.

Through athletics we can create that same hunger for sports the way Shasta College or the Redding community had. Through rivalries and great athletic competition we can do that and keep students and Connecticut residents involved in our campus community.

Then, just maybe, we could draw kids to come from out-of-state to continue their academic and athletic careers at a community college in Connecticut because they would recognize the commitment and opportunities to athletics in our community colleges, creating the true diversity that a junior college like Shasta College had. So, what better way can we serve students than by giving them the same atmosphere they would enjoy at any four-year institution. To do that I believe there is no better way than athletics to begin making students become accustomed to the true atmosphere of what college should be.