By Ljudmila Petrovic
Photos by Vaikunthe Banerjee
SFYou is a new addition to the features section. It aims to put a spotlight on SFU’s diverse population, including students, faculty, and groups across all the university’s campuses. Got somebody you think should be spotlighted? Email features@the-peak.ca!
The life of a student athlete is not an easy one: balancing school, daily practices, competitions, and sometimes work is already impressive enough. Some student athletes, however, take it even a step further, as they actively represent the varsity student body. Two such examples are Trisha Bouchard — the president of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) — and Jade Richardson, the vice-president.
SAAC was initially more of a social committee whose main focus was to bring all of the Clan’s varsity teams together. “Its main goal was to get all the athletes together, so we didn’t have a divide amongst the individual teams,” says Bouchard. “We wanted everybody to be one big happy Clan family, if you will. That’s what it used to be.”
Recently, however, SAAC has grown into a committee comprised of one or two reps for each of SFU’s varsity teams. The group meets once or twice a month and discusses things such as legislation issues, gender equality issues within the teams, and any broken NCAA compliance rules. Their main goal for this year is to bring student athletes closer to the rest of the student body. “We’re trying to bridge the gap between student-athletes and regular students,” says Bouchard. “We’re trying to get our school more involved in athletics, and have everyone join together.” SAAC is planning on hosting more social events, such as pub nights, and having more tickets sales and student discounts in order to reach this goal. “We’re hoping to get it out more to people that aren’t athletes,” adds Richardson. “It’s just difficult because obviously the school is in the NCAA, and the athletes are in the NCAA, but I think the school is somewhat disjointed from it.”
As the only Canadian school in the NCAA, SFU’s student athletes face additional challenges. “It’s so much easier for schools in the States to have this sort of thing, because they have so much manpower, so much money dedicated to this,” says Bouchard. “Whereas SFU doesn’t have that yet. We’re hoping to slowly get there, but it’ll be a process. It won’t just happen overnight.” The two student athletes discuss the lack of support they feel when they go down the US schools for games: a 7,000-person university will bring out a crowd of 4,000 people, says Richardson. Needless to say, SFU’s home games have a less than satisfactory turnout. Furthermore, being the only Canadian university in the NCAA puts a lot of pressure on SFU’s student athletes. “When we go to the States, we’re the ambassadors for Canada, we’re ambassadors for SFU, we’re the faces of the school when we travel,” says Richardson. “Our actions are what people see when we travel, what they’re going to think of our school, so I think it’s unbelievable how little support we have.”
In their roles as president and vice-president, Bouchard and Richardson organize and lead SAAC’s meetings, and also go to any meetings with compliance officers and other institutional bodies within SFU. Furthermore, they represent SFU at meetings with SAAC representatives from other schools, which are held twice a year in Seattle. This has provided them with the opportunity to see how varsity athletics fit into the SFU community. “SFU beforehand was strictly an academically driven school,” says Bouchard. “Now we want to have it still focusing on the athletic side, but bringing in that athletic component as another attribute to SFU.” Furthermore, they are working towards raising money for the Make a Wish Foundation. “This is the first year we’ve been able to do this,” notes Richardson. “We want to at least equal the funds of some of the teams in our conference. It’s definitely something we need to start focusing on, and people need to be aware that we’re moving forward.”
“I think it’s important that people do know about the work that we do, aside from being athletes,” she adds. Both Richardson and Bouchard noted that there is a certain stereotype surrounding student athletes, and they want to dispel the archetypal image of the “dumb jock” through their work with SAAC. “That’s not how it is,” concludes Bouchard. “People need to change how they perceive SFU student-athletes.”
