0:00  
And we'll have one last reminder lakehead ny Laurentian into McMaster in three Western in four York and five queens and six Ryerson in seven, Laurie and eight Waterloo and 913.

0:22  
On October 26 2019, the Ryerson University cross country team visited Hamilton Ontario's Bayfront park for the provincial championships. The UAE championships, which is short for the Ontario University athletic championships are held every October, the women raced eight kilometers and the men ran 10 yo yo as determined who are the fastest men and women in the province and in 2019, the Ryerson Rams were hoping to make their mark. The team has been competing in the US since its inception in 2015. Since then, the team's level has been steadily increasing with each passing season. Like the Ryerson runners, the volleyball, basketball and other teams at Ryerson compete in the UAE circuit. All of these athletes train on a regular basis perfecting their craft, honing their skills and getting stronger and quicker to be the best athletes that they can be. The cross country team practices several times a week always outdoors, whether there's rain shine, or even snow. Since the cross country soccer, hockey and any other teams all feature dedicated student athletes, it should be fair to assume that they all receive the same support. Well, that assumption is wrong. And it turns out that not all student athletes are created equally in the eyes of the Ryerson athletic department. Really, the main difference between cross country in any of our arsons other teams is the title given to them by the athletic department, cross countries and Athletic Club, not a varsity team. There are 18 Athletic Clubs at Ryerson and 11 varsity teams. Most of these teams are bigger sports like volleyball, soccer, hockey, and basketball, each of which have two teams, one for men and one for women. The other three varsity teams are figure skating, fencing and badminton. And this distinction club versus team determines whether a group gets consistent support or not. The lack of funding and support from the school does not go unnoticed by members of the team, including Megan Gaudet, who was running with Ryerson for three years. I came from another university and I've seen what like kind of perks come with being on a varsity sport, which is kind of nice. And and there was a there's a lot of things that like we had to pay to pocket. One of the perks as good at put it is transportation to and from events. In their first couple of seasons, the cross country team had to rent vans dodge caravans to get to races looking more like a convoy of families on a road trip than a university cross country team. Now the athletic department lets the team run to school bus for races. The school has its own bus, a nice coach bus painted golden blue with words like spirit, teamwork and unity written on it. But that unity is apparently only for the varsity teams because the cross country team has never even been offered the bus for a race. their owners also had to pay out of their own pockets for their uniforms, racing lifts and shorts, which compared to outfitting an entire hockey team is actually quite minimalistic. I think our coaches are pretty accommodating. And they like really work to give us the most they can. But yeah, and I think

3:19  
Yeah, we're a

3:20  
little short on funds, the Rams have been looking to ascend from club to Team status ever since 2015. But last day heard that is much easier said than done. In previous years, the athletic department told the Rams that to be pushed up to varsity status, they would have to place in the top five at all us for three years in a row. To put this in perspective, the University of Toronto men's cross country team has competed in the collegiate provincial championships since 1902. That's 113 more years and Ryerson has been on the scene and they've won the title 42 times. To be fair, their last provincial championship was in 1993. But this is an established program and the reputation still attracts elite runners from all across Canada. In the last decade, this 42 time championship team has managed to make the top five just three times at provincials and not in three consecutive years. So sure, Ryerson did give the cross country team criteria for earning varsity status, but it was ridiculously unattainable. Albert alaba is the head coach of the cross country team and he's been involved with the group since 2015. I wanted

4:28  
to get involved a number of years ago when I just looked up, Ryerson realized they didn't have a coach. This is back when they had just one runner, and then nothing came to that and then I looked it up a few years ago and saw the Tim celaena and the original coach had started the started the team I messaged him and said I need some help. Here's my background. We talked about it and came on as assistant coach and the rest is kind of history. I took over Tim retired a couple years after and took over his head coach

4:59  
Lapa didn't see A coach wanted job posting, nor was he contacted by the school's athletic department, which is what might be the case with the varsity teams at Ryerson. instead. Robertson's first runner, a single athlete named Steven Hosier, who was sometimes referred to as the lone RAM, kata lap as I and piqued his interest. They

5:17  
call them the lone RAM, right. And so I reached out to Ryerson at the time and said, Do you guys need a cross country coach, they said, no need for it at the time, right and then just out of curiosity, and looked back a couple years later, and Tim it started the program. So it was it was kind of, you know, flipped into it a little bit. But Tim and I hit it off and had similar coaching philosophies and strategies and worked out.

5:41  
While the program at Ryerson is still young. The team is showing promise. This season, Rebecca verlon and Michael constant topless to athletes have run with the team since it was created in 2015. Both posted program best results at the dawn Mills open in Waterloo. It was an 8k for both the men's and women's races. verlon placed eighth overall in a time of 3216 and konstantopoulos cross the line and ninth in 27 minutes and 10 seconds. These two top 10 finishes were the best results recorded by Ram since the team's inception. Its results like these that keep the lappa and the Rams motivated, showing them that they're on an upward trajectory. While the cross country team is hoping to eventually make the jump from club to team. They're not the only Athletic Club looking to gain varsity status. I spoke with Ben rich, the coach of the Ryerson baseball club. Rich founded this club in 2013. And he has coached the Rams ever since. A former collegiate baseball player himself. Rich knows firsthand how valuable and enriching a university athletics career can be.

6:43  
I completed my Master's of Public Policy at Ryerson graduate in 2012. Personally, definitely not. In my undergrad, which was at Western afford only I played on the team there. And it was the best part of my student experience at Western as well. I looked at Ryerson and you know, there's a whole cohort of students that are missing out on the kind of experience that I had. So I assembled the coaching staff went to the athletics department, basically cold coffee athletics departments. I've got an idea. And let me let me

7:17  
just like the Cross Country Club, the baseball club at Ryerson has dealt with the struggles of lacking varsity status.

7:24  
So as a as a quote club team at liason we don't receive dedicated annual funding from the department the way other teams do, the way it works is basically each year since inception, you know, we've come to athletics with a proposal for a component of our season to fund so we always have to ask we've never been denied. I don't want to diminish the contribution that athletics have made. On an average year $2,000 of a 15 to $20,000 budget is what we're receiving.

7:58  
Rich has been pushing for varsity status for baseball since he started coaching at Ryerson. But a smaller request that he's made to the athletic department over the years has been to simply know what the criteria is for an athletic club to become a varsity team. Ivan Joseph was the athletic director when rich founded the baseball club. Joseph left Ryerson in 2018. And Jeff Giles, Interim Director filled the spot for a year. Now, Louise Callen has taken the helm of Ryerson athletics. In the baseball clubs, seven seasons of play, there have been three athletic directors, but rich has received little to no guidance on the path to varsity status,

8:34  
or certainly, winning helps perform well and not to put pressure on the athletics department to make a change. I can't ever recall getting an absolutely clearly defined set of criteria by which if you meet xy and z, you know, then then Okay, yeah, can you move up.

8:54  
In addition to baseball and cross country, there are 16 other Athletic Clubs at Ryerson, it's safe to say that most if not all of these Athletic Clubs at Ryerson are looking to go from club to Team status. And of course, this is not feasible. It's easy to see why the athletic department cannot give as much funding to every club as they do for each varsity team. But that isn't the real issue here. Of course, there have to be some guidelines to ensure that a club earns varsity status and the funding that goes with it. But a club cannot earn that status. If the criteria for climbing that ladder doesn't exist. To find out more about the unattainable or in some cases, non existent criteria. I spoke with Nick Sweeney, the head of varsity operations at the Ryerson athletic department.

9:38  
The original model that we were following in our department, our Sport model, and a lot of schools operate in a sport model or sport classification system. Our model is I think, going on about 10 years old now. And was developed to sort of leadership's ago. We've just kind of come on board with new leadership in the department. That'll be sort of a strategic priority to look at our Sport model. And what needs to change. The challenge with the original Sport model is that at the time, we had the 11 teams, and we only had about eight clubs total. So it made it made sense at the time, and it does not make any sense anymore. It's it's difficult to understand it's difficult to execute now with 40 programs and changing priorities in the department.

10:30  
In addition to the 11 varsity teams and 18 Athletic Clubs at Ryerson, as Queenie noted that there are over 20 other sports clubs, all of which are recreational rather than competitive like cross country in baseball. From teams to competitive and recreational clubs. There are over 50 sports programs under the athletic departments wing. And like Sweeney said, the current Sport model isn't made for that many groups. As Queenie cites this as the reason for a lack of criteria for those competitive clubs. Probably right now, there's

10:59  
not a hard set criteria that a program could follow or a map that a team could follow.

11:05  
the athletic department is undergoing a transition with Louise Cowan as its new head. But it's still surprising that the Ryerson Sport model wasn't updated before she took over. Ben rich and the baseball team had been asking for clarity on the guidelines for becoming a varsity team long before Ivan Joseph left the school. Same with cross country and other Athletic Clubs. If Ryerson was willing to accept so many new athletic programs into their department, they should have updated their Sport model to accommodate all the new additions on the Cross Country end of things. delaffei certainly knows that his club is not the only one hoping to earn varsity status. But with the recent shifts in the athletic department, he's hopeful that cross country can eventually make that jump to the next level.

11:44  
I think

11:44  
they're open to it. Like, there's good stories and we start to show improvement, I think they're open to having a discussion. So it may not be as my sense is not as rigid as it previously was. But we're still treating it for all intensive purposes like a varsity team, but we don't have the funding.

12:03  
For now the Ryerson cross country runners will have to go on supporting themselves without the perks of varsity status. They'll have to pay for their own uniforms and continue taking school buses to meats. But the lab doesn't let his team get too down about this. He tells us runners something that encourages them to power forward.

12:19  
Future teams will be standing on the shoulders of the guy, the athletes are on the team now, right? We're building the program. These are the guys that are kind of the foundation of it. Right? I think that's you know, we're showing that more and more as we see now some of the runners like Mike and Rebecca that are you know, this their last season's are close to their last seasons and the younger athletes are coming in and looking up to them, building that legacy of athletes. You know that to look up to or that come back as assistant coaches or, guys that you know, where the foundation's

12:58  
lack of funding and support from the school may be frustrating for Ryerson runners and any competitive club. It's for that matter, but they're all building that foundation for future teams that may not pay for the uniform bills or get the teams to competition today, but it's something to look forward to for tomorrow.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai