Looking for approval

   Granite Bay High School has an array of California Interscholastic Federation sports, such as swimming, soccer, volleyball and basketball. But talented athletes don’t just compete in these teams, but in club teams as well.
   Granite Bay Rugby is a team started two years ago by John Kimble, who is now the coach. Being a former rugby player himself, he wanted to start the program and teach the GBHS students how to play.
   The rugby team, not yet an official CIF team, faces complications with the school being a club sport.
   “The field isn’t provided for us, so we practice at Feist Park instead of practicing here,” said John Kimble, a GBHS sophomore and the son of the coach.
   For the players, it takes more time to get to practice since they can’t just change in the locker room and head out directly to the football field like other sports.
   Being a club team also means that they have to support themselves financially.
   The rugby team has to buy everything for themselves such as insurance, uniforms and most importantly, the playing fields.
   Even though the rugby team has been a club sport for the past two years, it has hopes to turn into a CIF sport next year.
   The Sacramento High School Rugby Conference is working on turning rugby at GBHS into a CIF sport.
   There are about seven teams around the region in position trying to go CIF, GBHS included. If the team does make it, it’ll make things a lot easier for them because they will be able to use school facilities.
   But the facilities may be the only thing that might be available to them.
   “Even if we turned into an official rugby team for the school, I doubt that they’ll be able to provide everything for us,” coach John Kimble said. “We’d still have to be self- sufficient, which we really don’t mind doing.”
   The team does different types of fundraisers. Local food places, such as Nuyo, have been helping to support them.
   Another advantage to becoming a CIF sport is that the athletes can put on their transcripts  and college applications that they were on a school varsity team.
   Similarly, the boys’ and girls’ lacrosse teams started out as a club and later became official CIF teams.
   The lacrosse team became CIF in 2008 and had been club three years before that.
  The girls’ lacrosse team did well while it was a club. The main teams they played were down in the Bay Area and their seasons would often go undefeated.
   There weren’t many local teams that were club, but once they turned CIF, they faced much more competition.
   Also, they were no longer able to play the teams they played before unless they turned CIF as well and their schedules changed drastically.
   The whole lacrosse team had to change its skill set completely because the teams that it started playing against were better than the club teams it had played.
   The team was constantly challenged by tough teams, but this year, it has been making a comeback.
   “It was really exciting to see the lacrosse team becoming official,” GBHS senior Lauren Donaldson said. “It became more school oriented and gained more recognition.”