Anisha Kumar
Welcome back to the Bruno Brief. I’m Anisha Kumar, podcast host and senior editor here at The Herald. Proficiency in a sport can be a significant factor in college admissions, especially for students who get recruited at the varsity level. But it turns out, club sports at Brown also have some recruiting influence. This week, we’ll be speaking with senior staff writer Teddy Fisher and section editor Ciara Meyer about what club sports recruiting really looks like. Here’s Teddy —
Teddy Fisher
I'm Teddy Fisher. I'm a senior staff writer on admissions and financial aid.
Anisha Kumar
And here’s Ciara —
Ciara Meyer
Hi, I'm Ciara Meyer. I'm a section editor for the university news and metro sections at The Herald.
Certain sports at Brown, like rugby, squash and ultimate frisbee, are designated club sports that don’t have varsity counterparts. The University’s club teams do not receive the formally reserved recruiting spots allotted to varsity sports, but —
Teddy Fisher
A few of these sports happen to recruit, not in the same way that D1 NCAA varsity sport might recruit, but they still do look for players, and we were curious as to how this process works.
Ciara Meyer
The primary difference between club sports recruitment and varsity sports recruitment is just the formality of it. Varsity teams have, like a pretty standardized process for recruiting. They're given a certain number of allocated spots by the admissions office, and they're able to offer more of a — essentially, like a guarantee to prospective players about whether or not they will be admitted.
Anisha Kumar
At the club level, outreach looks different, both from coaches and prospective players.
Ciara Meyer
It's kind of up to the coach what level of engagement they want to have with prospective players. The recruiting process pretty much involves players reaching out to the coaches. Occasionally, the coaches engage in outreach by going to tournaments across the country. Sometimes the men's rugby coach sometimes travels abroad for recruitment purposes, but typically players reach out to them, or they connect with players informally, and then, they get a sense for the player's experience in the sport.
Teddy Fisher
I spoke to the men's rugby head coach, David Laflamme. He has such established relationships with not only schools across the country, like high schools with good rugby programs. He doesn't really feel the need to even host a prospect camp anymore. Brown, essentially, the way he described it, has feeder high schools that sort of almost offer him players to look for and to talk to. And it seems like that recruiting pipeline is so established to the point where Laflamme could pretty much do almost nothing, and he would have players who want to come play for him.
Anisha Kumar
Do current club athletes play any role in the recruiting process?
Teddy Fisher
If a student was visiting, maybe a senior in high school who was thinking about applying to Brown and playing rugby, then a couple players on the team would show them around. They would attend the rugby game that would be happening that weekend if there was one, they would maybe go to practice if there was something like that, as well as social events. So they really tried to give them the full experience in just 48 hours.
Anisha Kumar
If prospective players are athletically qualified, the next step is an academic evaluation.
Ciara Meyer
They check grades, GPA, standardized test scores, things like that, to see if the player is qualified for Brown. And then at that point, the coach can make a decision to potentially offer a letter of recommendation in support of the athlete. They can offer a rec letter, and then also by having the academic pre-read conducted, it kind of flags your name. But there's no guarantee for club sports. There's no saying, like, just because the coach recommended you or likes you, you're in.
Anisha Kumar
Prospective varsity athletes follow an expedited application timeline, separate from non-athlete applicants. What about in club sports?
Ciara Meyer
For club sports, they apply on the exact same timeline as regular applicants. Coaches find out a few days in advance of acceptances, which of their players that they recruited have been accepted. But the players themselves don't get any sort of advanced notice. They find out their admissions results the same day everyone else does, whether that be RD or ED.
Anisha Kumar
The informal recruiting process for club sports also doesn’t have the same binding commitment that varsity recruiting does.
Ciara Meyer
Club athletes can be recruited for the sport and then pretty easily just turn the other way, whereas for varsity athletes that can be a bit more challenging.
Anisha Kumar
The story also highlights perspectives from a few club athletes — Rowe Stodolnic ’27 on men’s rugby, and Bella Bin ’28 on women’s squash — who shared why they chose Brown’s club athletics over potential varsity slots at other schools.
Ciara Meyer
One thing (Stodolnic) told me — he's on the men's rugby team — was that he was interested in the fact that at Brown the culture of the men's rugby team is one that prioritizes academics a lot more than some other programs do, partially because they're a club sport, they're able to really place a priority and an emphasis on the players interests outside of the sport.
On the squash side, one student I spoke with, Bella Bin, she mentioned that she was initially, like, dead set on playing D1. After she'd gone through the recruitment process a little bit further, she kind of realized that at Brown, the club squash team has all of the resources that a varsity team usually would. They're able to practice in the varsity gym. They travel to play against teams across the country, and they even actually play against a lot of varsity teams still, even though they are not a varsity team themselves anymore. So speaking to her, she kind of was like the only real difference between Brown's club squash team and another school's varsity team is just the title.
Anisha Kumar
What were some of your takeaways from reporting on this piece?
Teddy Fisher
So I was really interested to see, like, sort of in that gray area. You know, you're not quite a NARP, as my athlete friends would like to call it, a non-athlete regular person, but you're not quite a varsity athlete either. Obviously, every student that gets into Brown is qualified and like, deserves to be here. But as far as club athletes, not only are they playing their sport at a high level, but academically, the bar is higher for them than it is for varsity athletes. That's kind of what I was chasing with this story.
Ciara Meyer
And I think I'd say a lot of the admissions process is about, like, connections, it seems. And I think club athletics offers a unique lens into a very informal way that those connections can happen.
Teddy Fisher
Oftentimes these players were recruited at the varsity level, but for whatever reason, Brown doesn't offer these sports at the varsity level. But that doesn't mean that these students couldn't have gone to another school and played these sports at a varsity level. They, like Ciara said with (Stodolnic), like, they made the choice to sort of prioritize their academics, or maybe the varsity route and the lifestyle that comes with that wasn't for them.
Anisha Kumar
Teddy and Ciara, thanks so much for joining us. Here’s a brief rundown of other stories recently reported by The Herald.
The Brown University Police Sergeants Union announced that they had issued a unanimous vote of no confidence in Brown University Police Chief Rodney Chatman and Deputy Chief John Vinson.
A bill nicknamed the “Taylor Swift Tax” will enact a new surcharge on second homes in Rhode Island valued at or exceeding $1 million. The bill will take effect July 1, 2026.
And finally, the Trump administration’s recent changes to H-1B visas, which now require a $100,000 fee for sponsorship, will likely affect both international faculty and students alike. The University is still unclear as to what comes next.
Thanks again for tuning in to the Bruno Brief. This episode was produced, edited and scripted by Talia LeVine, Ciara Meyer and Anisha Kumar. If you like what you hear, subscribe to The Bruno Brief wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.
