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What It Means to be a Club Sport Ad­vi­sor

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Malia Dunbar, faculty advisor of the Maryville Rugby Club was awarded ‘Advisor of the Year’ for her outstanding efforts at the Student Life Recognition banquet in 2016. Photo courtesy of Andrew Mandziara.

Every fam­ily has a leader. The role may be dif­fer­ent when you look at a con­ven­tional fam­ily, but for the Maryville Men’s club rugby team it was clear from the be­gin­ning. It’s a fe­male.

A whole mix of play­ers founded the club. With dif­fi­cult be­gin­nings and a tough time re­cruit­ing, the play­ers wanted to make the club le­git­i­mate in ef­forts to gain more mem­bers. The last piece of the puz­zle was adding a fac­ulty ad­vi­sor.

Malia Dun­bar is the as­sis­tant lab man­ager and bi­ol­ogy co­or­di­na­tor. “My role be­gan back in 2011 when a for­mer stu­dent ap­proached me within the first few weeks of classes. He was in one of my late night bi­ol­ogy labs and he put down this funny look­ing foot­ball on the table. I thought, ‘What the heck is that?’’’ Dun­bar said. She had no knowl­edge of what rugby meant or how it was played. It did­n’t mat­ter. “He de­scribed it to me as if soc­cer and foot­ball had a child.”

The po­si­tion is a vol­un­teer role, of­ten times needed dur­ing work hours and can be a dis­trac­tion from the day to day work. When asked if it got in the way of her job Dun­bar com­mented, “Not re­ally. I’ve al­ways found a good bal­ance be­tween my work and the team. I wear sev­eral dif­fer­ent hats with be­ing on the alumni board and be­ing heav­ily in­volved; the team knows I’m fo­cused on them de­spite my lack of at­ten­dance at cer­tain times of the year. They’re worth it.”

Time and com­mit­ment can be an is­sue for stu­dent ath­letes. When you add an­other role into the mix, it can be chal­leng­ing to have trust in oth­ers. “The team func­tions on its own, if there is an is­sue then the team ad­dresses it and han­dles it. How­ever if I am needed, I try to keep times open for them. My door is al­ways open if the play­ers need any­thing so­cial or aca­d­e­m­i­cally based. I feel like that’s where I can help the most.”

As the fac­ulty ad­vi­sor, Dun­bar is the li­ai­son be­tween the club and the uni­ver­sity. With the Play­Maryville ini­tia­tive tak­ing flight, there are more and more club teams be­ing added each aca­d­e­mic year. One of the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the po­si­tion is keep­ing track of grades, and en­sur­ing every stu­dent ath­lete is reg­is­tered as a full time stu­dent. “Stu­dent first ath­lete sec­ond. I’m here as a re­source.” Dun­bar said, “I just try to make sure if there is any­thing they need, they know where to turn. I try to give ad­vice on classes to take, where good places to study are, things of that na­ture.”

Given the nick­name of “team mom,” Dun­bar said there was no get­ting out of it. She had to ac­cept it. With a smile on her face she ex­plained, “What I re­ally en­joy the most is the con­nec­tion. Be­ing able to sup­port club sports in gen­eral. We don’t get school fund­ing or full time schol­ar­ships to hand out. It’s some­thing the kid are pas­sion­ate about and choose to do. I love that.” Dun­bar said. “I en­joy watch­ing the game now, it was a no brainer for me to help out in some way. I’m so glad I get to be a part of their suc­cess in the class­room, and on the field.”

It is im­por­tant to be in­volved on cam­pus. Don’t be afraid to start some­thing you are pas­sion­ate about. Find a fac­ulty ad­vi­sor. Get in­volved. Be great. It’s the Maryville way. Af­ter two and a half years I can say con­fi­dently that club sports has changed my life. Some of my best friends have come out of my club sports team. It al­lowed me to be in­volved on cam­pus with other teams and stu­dent or­ga­ni­za­tions. I can­not say enough about the sup­port I re­ceived here on and off the field.

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