The News continues its in-depth look into athletic funding with this, the third of a four-part series:
Nate Houghton loves soccer, but not on this day.
It is cold and rainy, and a foot injury that has pained him all season is especially cranky today. Granted, the captain of the men’s soccer team can bask in the fact that his squad appeared in its fourth straight America East Championship contest and advanced to the second round of the NCAA College Cup, despite playing with only three scholarship players (awarded mostly to international athletes) on the 23-man squad.
The women’s team is not much better off. It gives out five awards, seven less than the NCAA limit. That does not make competing on the deprived program any easier. After attending classes until about four or five in the afternoon, Houghton goes over to the police station to check out a van. As the only player authorized to drive the vehicle, the captain makes runs transporting his teammates from University grounds to Parson’s Field in Brookline. Practices run from 7-9 p.m. And it is at that time Houghton takes everybody home, drives the van back to Columbus and returns the keys, only to travel on the train back to his Mission Hill apartment.
“They gave us two leased vans for the men’s and women’s team. That means that the women get one van, and we get one van. For 22 players on the soccer team, we have one van to get to practice. The idea was that the women practice from 12-2, and then are supposed to give the keys to the men’s team, but that just doesn’t work. Between everybody’s schedules and everybody’s mix-ups, you need two vans for one team, and two vans for the other team,” he remarked.
Needless to say, the funding, or lack thereof, for the soccer program has left a bitter taste in the senior’s mouth.
“As far as I know, the Athletics Department gives … the women’s team gets more money than the men’s team because of Title IX. The men’s team has a budget of, I don’t know, but it’s not enough. The budget will pay for our airfare if we need to fly, our bus transportation if we need to drive, our meals, we get seven dollars for dinner, and I guess hotel. If we stop for lunch, we have to pay our own way. Everything else [including] uniforms, extra meal money, we take care of,” he said.
Like the track program, the soccer unit has to pay much if its own way for tournaments as well.
“We went to Memphis, we had to raise like 10 grand. Over the past two years, we’ve worked at Breakers games, Patriots games, stuff like that, as security guards. Man, you go and you play 120 minutes in a double-overtime game, and you tie, and the next day is supposed to be your day off, but you have to get up at 8 o’clock in the morning, and drive a van to the Patriots game to get there by 9 o’clock, and stand up, watching a crowd as security, until 8 o’clock at night after you played 120 minutes. That’s your day off. That sucks,” Houghton continued.
“It’s the worst experience of your life. You can’t move. They don’t have seats. You have to stand with your arms folded looking at the crowd, watching a bunch of drunk, fat guys rooting for the Pats. And that’s cool. It’s fun to go to a Pats game, but not the day after a game when it’s supposed to be your day off. The next day you have practice, and you have to do it, because your program doesn’t get enough money to buy uniforms or pay for your meals. That’s just not right.”
The women are not exempt from this struggle. Jackie Spellman, a freshman on last year’s team, was recruited to play for Northeastern but received no financial aid.
“I won’t leave based on my financial aid,” she said. “If that means that I have to take out more loans to stay here, then that’s what I will do.”
Northeastern soccer director Ed Matz, who is the only soccer coach in Division I heading two programs (he coaches both the men’s and women’s teams) simultaneously, gives the players times and dates for the games that the players must work. It poses a difficult task for many of the players, especially this year, as a strong contingent of student-athletes are freshmen from western Massachusetts and New Jersey. If they are unable to work the events, the players are required to pay the difference, so that each teammate contributes the same amount.
Still, Houghton’s travails are but an extension of his coach’s. Matz was unsure of the reasoning behind the fusion of the two programs, but he accepted his fate with open arms.
“I don’t know the real reason why it was combined. I was just told that that’s what was going to happen and if I wanted to remain the men’s coach, I would have to consider taking over the women’s program, which I love doing. I definitely like doing both positions,” he said.
Though Matz says the situation has improved greatly since he became the coach of both programs in 1999, the challenge of the task is no less daunting.
“The funding as far as what comes from the school has gotten better over the last couple of years. Four or five years ago, before the new administration took over, we had our phones shut off in the middle of the year. We’d come back, and we didn’t even have money to do overnight trips, even conference trips. It’s gradually gotten better as far as finances go for that.
“We try to reach out; we do a lot of fundraising. We have our own youth soccer tournament in March where the kids have to be here during spring break and they have to work at least one of the days during spring break to raise money. We have a golf tournament that we raise money and the kids do work down at Foxboro stadium at various events, ranging from football games to rock concerts to world cup soccer events where it’s a good thing, but they’re long days and they don’t get to watch the events. But it’s a way to make money for the program,” he said.
Matz continued, “It’s still tough. I usually come in at 9:30 in the morning during the season, and the women’s team practices from 12 to 2, them I come back and do some office work back down here, and then we go back to Parsons Field for the men’s practice at 7 to 9, and that’s during the regular season. During preseason is probably one of the toughest times because it’s a two-week period where one team practices for two hours, and the other team practices for two hours, and then the other team, so it’s just continuous practice for me, which is pretty tough. It also has gotten much better since I found a full-time women’s assistant. That’s also been a very big help to me.”
The assistant, Kelly Desmond, is his only full-time associate in the program. The two part-time coaches, Jeff Lipman and Brendan Donahue, receive “extremely low salaries,” according to Matz.
Unlike the track team, whose alumni had been a non-factor for several years, the soccer program has no such people to call upon.
“On either side, we don’t even have end of the season banquets or anything like that, which other teams enjoy here, because we don’t have the alumni support,” he said. “On the women’s side, they don’t have an alumni program, so they have zero money coming in.
“On the men’s side, it’s only 14 years old, the program is, and most of those alums have had such a bad experience with Northeastern soccer that it’s been difficult trying to get them to support the program just because they have the attitude, ‘Well, if the administration doesn’t support the program, why should I?'” Katz noted that the team’s back then did not receive scholarships, and did not even have a locker room while at Parsons Field (that went to the visiting field hockey team).
Though players have no actual problem with the area on which they compete, the facilities surrounding Parsons serves as a hindrance to all parties involved.
“As a soccer field goes, Parsons Field is perfect,” Houghton said, “but you go to other schools, they have locker rooms that work. We have three showers; two of them don’t work. You can’t fit our whole team into the locker room at once; it’s just too small. Even football, their locker room is split into two sections. They have a freshmen locker room, and then it’s everybody else. How do you create team unity by doing that?”
Matz agreed, adding, “Given the fact that you can’t go on the field before nine o’clock in the morning or past nine o’clock at night makes it difficult to schedule everything in there. On Sundays, you can’t go on the field before noon. It’s just not a lot of time to fit three varsity programs.”
Matz also praised the Northeastern student body for their support in the football team, especially considering the difficulty involved with traveling on the shuttle bus. The soccer teams, on the other hand, have no such shuttle. If fans want to attend a game, they must do so via the T or find their own means of transportation. Matz’ reasoning on the matter?
“The school has maintained the position that there’s not enough student interest to run a shuttle van or run a van to the soccer events,” he said. “Whether that’s the case or not, I don’t know.”
Like the track program, the success of the soccer program works against itself.
“Ed [Matz] was telling me that somebody in the athletics department, she asked for more money, and they said to him he’s his own worst enemy,” Houghton said. “His teams keep on doing so well, why would they give him more money? They just keep on getting better and better, but they stay at the same amount of money. We’re the most underfunded team in the America East. We’ve been in the America East playoffs the last four years in a row. That’s just wild how we keep on doing that. I mean, we won it this year. It really doesn’t make any sense, and it gives the athletics department no reason to give us more money.
“On the flip side, if we were doing horrible, they wouldn’t give us any damn money. It doesn’t really matter. I don’t even think they care. I think they want us to do well, but they’re not going to give us any more money, no matter how well we do,” he added.
Next week, The News concludes its look at funding.
