Somewhere within the hectic schedule of many MBA students ““ amid the constant flurry of work, classes and e-mail replies ““ is a time slot allocated for play. For many of the students at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, club sports are just as integral to their daily routine as business meetings and BlackBerry messages.
“Sports is what people use as an outlet,” said Josh Brinkenhoff, a second-year MBA student and co-president of Anderson Athletics. “Business events can be cumbersome at times. That’s why it’s good to have these sports clubs that provide us with something different.”
With that rationale, the business students at Anderson have created sports clubs over the years as a means for recreational and competitive athletics. The clubs acted independently as individually funded student groups under the Anderson Student Association until last spring, when a group of second-year students created Anderson Athletics to represent all of the sports clubs.
Created mostly as an umbrella organization for all of the athletic clubs, Anderson Athletics helps coordinate all of the different sporting activities, provides supplemental funding and forms new clubs. Anderson Athletics has already added three new clubs to the original seven: rugby, ski and snowboard, and the indoor and beach volleyball clubs were all formed under Anderson Athletics this school year.
With co-presidents Brinkenhoff and fellow second-year MBA student Shaun Murphy at the helm, Anderson Athletics has plans to continue promoting and building new sports clubs.
“There’s been some interest in creating a basketball club and a softball club, among others,” Brinkenhoff said. “Hopefully we can launch those and get those off the ground.”
But with new additions, one potential problem Anderson Athletics faces is efficiently allocating the funds to the new and existing clubs. Brinkenhoff said that they will need to focus on divvying up the money without depleting existing funding to the original seven clubs.
And given the current participation rate, a growth in Anderson Athletics is to be expected.
Although the Anderson MBA class totals 700 students, Brinkenhoff approximates that about half of the class is involved in at least one Anderson Athletics club. For example, the Outdoor Adventure Business Association has close to 100 members.
“People at Anderson are very competitive, and at the same time, they like to work in teams,” Brinkenhoff said. “People are definitely into sports here.”
The clubs of Anderson Athletics look for new members early on in the year as Anderson holds two different fairs: one for full-time and one for part-time MBA students.
“There’s a big club fair that’s part of the Anderson orientation experience that everybody has to go to,” said Yoni Aizer, a second-year MBA student and one of the co-captains of the Anderson Soccer Club. “Every single club in Anderson goes to the fair.”
The fair offers an opportunity for the students to find a group of their interest or explore something new. A bevy of factors draws in students to join Anderson Athletics, ranging from networking to just general fitness.
Brinkenhoff, who is also a co-president of the Anderson Running and Triathlon Club, did not participate in any sports clubs when he was an undergraduate at UCLA. It was not until he graduated and was working full-time that he began actively running.
“After a couple years of working and sitting at a desk in front of a computer, you start to gain a few pounds,” said Brinkenhoff, who will run his first marathon at this year’s Los Angeles Marathon. “Your metabolism starts to slow down, and you start to realize that you need to find an outlet not only to get back in shape but to get back into competing. … People just try to be more active in their sedentary lifestyle.”
But, as Brinkenhoff also mentioned, business students have a lot to do within a limited time frame. Fortunately for some students, the class schedule provides some breathing room.
“We’re lucky at the business school that we don’t have classes on Fridays for full-time MBA students,” second-year MBA student Ezra Berman said.
Berman, who is also a co-captain of the soccer club, mentioned that this available time allows entire clubs to meet, practice and, for the more advanced, travel.
“For the more competitive and more serious people, there are these travel tournaments where you can go, and all these schools send their most competitive players,” said Berman, whose soccer team will be traveling to the University of Texas’ McCombs School of Business in Austin for a tournament next month.
This type of high-level competition varies throughout the 10 clubs and their members. For some, Anderson Athletics is an opportunity to participate in recreational play with other students within Anderson.
“For me, tennis is my favorite way to connect with people,” said Debbie Yim, a second-year MBA student and one of the co-presidents of the Anderson Tennis and Racketball Club. “Just through a sport that I really love to do, … I’ve met a lot of great friends.
“You’re all from the same classes, and these are people that you form groups with, but we’re all really busy from the beginning of our first year when we begin recruiting. (Sports) is a way to meet people.”
But for others, these clubs are a continuation of high-level sports play that they became accustomed to during their earlier years.
“A lot of us (in the soccer club) played in intramurals in high school,” Berman said.
One of the current members of the Anderson Soccer Club, Tal Fogelman, was a part of the Israeli national soccer team growing up.
“The soccer club actually has a pretty strong presence,” Aizer said. “A lot of people come into Anderson knowing about the club. Actually, I know one person who chose Anderson because of our strong soccer club.”
So for the effectively time-managed MBA student, Anderson Athletics provides a great opportunity to mix business with pleasure. The only problem is fitting it into the schedule.
“Business school is really a competition for people’s time,” Brinkenhoff said. “There are so many things going on: You have all your business clubs, social activities, projects, work. … Then you have class. In business school, you have 20 things going on at once and only a finite amount of time. But I think people do a good job of balancing academic and social with sports.”