By Chris Estrada

Old habits die hard. Just ask Mark Salzillo.

Two years ago, the middler English and education major found himself at the end of his swimming career as he entered Northeastern. He said for him, the sport had been a way of life since early childhood, but because of the school’s lack of a varsity men’s swimming squad or swimming club, he had no choice but to leave the sport behind. As his freshman year continued, however, he found himself wanting to make a return to the pool.

“Towards the end of the year, I began doing research on forming a swimming club here and began to set out finding people that were interested,” Salzillo said. “I found some people through friends in my swimming circles, and one of them told me about Erin.”

Erin Selke, now a junior American Sign Language and psychology major, was closer than he thought – she was living across the hall from him. “From there, we started to collaborate on getting a club together, and we got a semblance of that last year toward the end,” Selke said. “We were able to get a good core group of swimmers, but it was just so late in the year, that people that were interested didn’t show.”

That fall, the fledgling group’s luck changed.

“It was complete mayhem as soon as we came back,” Salzillo said. “I left contact information on our Web site and a lot of freshmen got in contact with us. I was bombarded with e-mail. Because of the massive jump, Campus Recreation transferred us to club sports.”

With the swimming team now in the club fold, the number of club sports at Northeastern increased to 13. Along with swimming, cycling, figure skating, inline hockey, lacrosse, karate (gojo ryu and judo), rugby, wrestling, tennis, table tennis, snowboarding, ultimate Frisbee and sailing complete the list of teams involved in the program.

Driven more by competition, the club level is a jump from the more informal intramurals, while still offering a semblance of freedom from the sometimes-hectic world of varsity sports, where a longer, more intense commitment to the sport is often required, Salzillo said.

While some clubs are glad to be at the middle level, others dream of something bigger, he said. “We have 150 interested people, and their abilities range from limited experience to phenomenal swimmers who could hold their own at the varsity level, but didn’t particularly want to commit that much of their time,” Salzillo said. “While we’ll take anybody who is interested, our club will cater to those that have prior experience in the pool.”

Salzillo said he would eventually like to see the swim club split varsity team of both boys’ and girls’ teams. As of right now, only the women have varsity swimming.