Getting Fit at Fordham With the New Basketball Club
Max Berger, President of Fordham Lincoln Center’s Basketball Club. (PHOTO BY MICHELLE QUINN/THE OBSERVER)
April 29, 2015
As spring comes to the city, Fordham Lincoln Center students are aching to take advantage of the sunshine and warmer weather. A great way some of the students are doing just that is by joining Fordham at Lincoln Center’s new basketball club.
Max Berger, Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) ‘17, founded the club this semester. Practices are held Tuesdays and Fridays from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at Riverside Park near the 68th Street entrance, a 15 minute walk from the Fordham Lincoln Center campus. Currently, the club has about 20 members at practices. The club’s E-Board consists of Treasurer Joe Rametta, Secretary Martin Pagels, and Vice President Marlon Acosta.
The venue is particularly convenient for this club because it encourages students to explore the Upper West Side and get off of the Fordham Lincoln Center campus for at least a couple hours per week. It’s easy,especially during finals, to find you haven’t been outside for a few days at a time. According to Berger, “It’s cool because you get to play amongst yourselves, but if there are also other people there from around the city, you get a bigger community going.” So if students are looking to meet people and are athletically inclined, the new basketball club is a great option.
Part of why Berger wanted to create the club is that he found he was not the only student having difficulty with finding a place to play sports: “Athletics is something that’s definitely lacking on this campus, even if it’s just fitness.” While there is a gym in McMahon, it consists of limited machines, and there are not any official courts or fields. That’s one way this club is an asset to the Fordham Lincoln Center community: it takes anyone interested and shows them where they can go.
While it is currently the “Basketball Club,” Berger wants to make it clear that the club isn’t all about basketball. “There are plenty of people in my club who aren’t strictly basketball players. There are some who aren’t at all, but they just want to meet people and do something fun,” he said. The goal of the club isn’t to enhance basketball-specific skills; they don’t run drills. The purpose rather is to get Fordham Lincoln Center students outside and active, something that can be easy to forget at a primarily arts campus.
Berger also schedules meetings in a more formal classroom setting during the week. “I want to hear what members have to say,” he explained, “they seem to be more comfortable when it’s a classroom environment.” One of the things members are wondering is whether the club will get the funding to attend Knicks games. While that is part of the plan for the club, it is still too new to know for sure, because a budget has not yet been officially set by the United Student Government (USG).
One of the goals for the club for next year is certainly to get free or discounted tickets for Knicks or Nets games. Other than that, Berger is hoping for an athletic freshman class to get more students involved next year. More than anything, Berger said, “We’re excited for next year because that’s when we’re going to get to start to really turn it into something bigger than what it is now.”
