Student curling club falls to Penn in national semifinals

The UW-Green Bay student curling club made it all the way to the semifinal round of the second annual USA Curling College Championship, contested over the weekend in Rochester, N.Y. The team from Green Bay went 3-0 in pool play — beating MIT, hometown RIT and Hamilton College before falling to Ivy League entrant the University of Pennsylvania in the semifinals on Saturday night. Although the UWGB squad was unable to defend its national club-team title, the honor stayed in Wisconsin, with UW-Stevens Point beating Penn in the finals to claim the championship. You can learn more at the club’s Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/curlingclubofUWGB.

Clarification on campus support
In our previous posts about the Curling Club’s participation in the national tournament, we made clear that curling is not an NCAA-sanctioned sport, and is therefore not affiliated with Phoenix Athletics. However, the club — like many other student organizations — does receive funding from student activity fees as allocated by the student-run Segregated University Fee Allocation Committee. That funding, about $3,000 this academic year, covered supplies, travel and ice time for Midwest curling tournaments that qualified the UW-Green Bay club for nationals. Additional SUFAC funding for tournament participation outside the Midwest was not possible, and the club had already reached its travel limit for the year. Some media reports on the club’s fundraising efforts may have suggested, incorrectly, that the University (actually, SUFAC) was “unwilling” to underwrite the trip to nationals, as opposed to being “unable” to sponsor under the rules as written.