*This may be a tad lengthy, but please hear me out*

On Sunday, Maryland DII Club Baseball won their Regional Championship and earned a bid to the Club Baseball World Series in Columbus, GA starting on May 18th. Upon winning, we discovered that we needed to come up with thousands of dollars to make the trip. Together with Campus Recreation Services, we estimated that the trip would cost around $10,000, money we simply didn't have. We already had paid the for the majority of the trip to the regional tournament in Southern VA out of our own pockets.

The University gave us a quote of $9300 to use the only coach bus they were willing to offer us. This quote includes labor, lodging, etc. for 2 UMD employees to drive the bus. Regardless, to be charged that kind of sum to use a bus that exists primarily through the expense of our very own tuition money is nothing short of frustrating. With finals, organizing/fundraising for this whole trip, working with the University, and having the National Club Baseball Association threaten to suspend our program for a year if we don't come up with the money, this has proven to be a very stressful process for us.

Anyways, we have secured $6000, mostly from an anonymous donor who gathered a couple of business partners after being very frustrated at the situation. We still most likely need $4000 more, as hotel charges for us players aren't included in the bus quote. There was a front-page Diamondback article regarding this situation today that did not take into account the full quote that the University gave us.

http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/terps-club-baseball-struggles-to-fund-trip-to-world-series-1.2870809

This is the end of the road for some of us as athletes. We practice 3 days a week, play 3 games a weekend, and drive ourselves (and pay for our own gas) to go to all our games all over the East Coast. We organize our club events, schedule our own umpires and field times, balance our own budgets, and work a full academic schedule too. I'm truly not taking anything away from what the varsity athletes (we love them too, you may recognize me and my teammate as the baseball helmet guys at Comcast) do because they work extremely hard, but if what we do isn't being what a "student-athlete" is at its purest form, then I don't know what is.

If you want to ignore this post, that's fine. I understand. These things just don't matter to most. But if you'd like to help some fellow Terps on their quest to win our National Championship, it would be greatly appreciated. I'm taking time out of my finals week asking you for help. So if you'd like, shoot me an e-mail at bblack@umd.edu, and I'll walk you through it.

Our tournament info is here for any who is interested in general:

http://clubbaseball.org/Div2/series.asp

Thank you to anybody who gives us the time to read this post. Go Terps!