By Amanda Ostuni, News Correspondent

“Our sport is every other sport’s punishment.”

This motto is what goes through the mind of Erika Da Costa, a freshman on Northeastern’s club running team, every time she goes on one of her six-mile runs through Boston, trekking across the Charles River into Cambridge and heading to a bridge that will bring her back around to the grass outside the Cabot Center.

Since the fall of 2008, the club running team has grown immensely.

Elizabeth Yakaboski, then a freshman, joined what was at that point just a casual running club. By the end of October, however, the only members consistently showing up were Yakaboski and two others: junior Brian Boudreau and middler Jake Watterson.

In fall 2009, Yakaboski, Watterson, senior Portner and junior Navin Nathan took over as captains. Boudreau became the fifth captain in the spring of 2010.

“We wanted to make people competitive and tight-knit,” Portner said. They quickly got to work, expanding and restructuring the team.

The new captains built it up, first signing up for five races and holding practices every day. Once they got past the logistics of Northeastern University and the National Intercollegiate Running Club Association (NIRCA), they got uniforms, entered more races and began plans to host a meet at Solomon Outdoor track.

This meet was the Spring 2011 Northeast Regional, hosted and won by both the men’s and women’s teams.

The Huskies started their season with two open invitational meets.

The first was the USA Track and Field New England Indoor Championship at Harvard University Feb. 20 and the second was hosted by Northeastern Division I track and field club, held at Solomon track March 19.

The meets allowed the team members to get a feel for one another and test themselves against open competition as well as varsity athletes. While the club team didn’t win the meet, several runners showed signs of potential.

The captains held an informational meeting in the beginning of the semester and were pleasantly overwhelmed with the number of attendees. They expected 40 people to show up at the meeting, but more than 50 came and in the end, 51 were registered on the team.

“You can’t overestimate how proud we are at how this team has developed,” Portner said.

The team is more flexible than Division I, but is still a very well structured program. Practices are held five days a week, though captains allow a preferred minimum of three attendances.

“This is a place where you can have competition, but it doesn’t have to consume your life,” Watterson said.

Da Costa, who ran for the Division I cross country team last fall, feels that practices and workouts the captains have created are helpful.

She’s especially pleased with the team atmosphere, because it’s brought back the feeling of a team family that she’d loved in high school.

“As soon as I began to love club running, I decided I would be turning down the varsity offer for next fall,” Da Costa said.

As friends and teammates, 24 members of the club will be traveling to Bowling Green, Ohio to compete in the first ever national track and field intercollegiate club meet this weekend.

Most of the team ran competitively in high school, but some just want to be on the team with their friends or try something new. The meets have all the same events as high school or college track and field.

The club has adopted its open arms policy because although it is a team that aims to be competitive, the captains’ main intent was to create the bond that often comes with being on a sports team.

Yakaboski believes that being a part of the team has enhanced her college experience.

“Committing to running club is by far one of the best decisions that I have made,” she said. “Without it, I think that I would have felt as though my college experience would have been missing something: our team of exceptional individuals who have become true friends.”