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Episode 2_ A Personal Testimony from Michael Chamizo and His Struggle with Club Tennis
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Sophia Negese and her guest, Michael Tramizio, discuss the lack of a club tennis team at BC. Michael talks about his experience with tennis, how he played throughout middle and high school, and his disappointment in not finding a club tennis team at BC. He explains that he has applied for a club tennis team three times, but has been rejected each time. Michael and his friend Christos tried to propose a club tennis team, but faced challenges with COVID restrictions and construction on the tennis courts. They eventually formed a casual tennis club, attracting around 50 members, mostly freshmen and sophomores, as well as graduate students and clinic attendees. Hi, my name is Sophia Negese and I'm your host and today I'm here with a special guest and we're going to be discussing the lack of a club tennis team here at BC. Please introduce yourself, your year, your major, and where you're from. Hi, my name is Michael Tramizio, I'm a senior here at BC, I'm originally from Miami, Florida, and my major is accounting and finance. Thank you! Thanks for joining me today, Michael. Can you just give me a brief description of your relation with tennis, like if you grew up playing and just how it's been incorporated into your life? I was first introduced to tennis by my mom, she would take us to tennis clinics when I was younger and I would do that with my twin sister. I played a lot growing up, that wasn't my main sport but I mean going into middle school year my mom wanted me to play more, she wanted me to also be more focused on school and tennis was the perfect outlet. At tennis I would play about three hours a day for five times a week with the coach who was a friend of my dad's and we would play a lot and over that time I kind of developed more of a love for the sport. It was something that I could easily do with friends, it was a great way to meet people and it was just something you could do outside and just enjoy being present in the moment. So I did that from middle school all the way up to high school. I played varsity tennis. I was in the top five lineup for the majority of the year, maybe playing spots three or four. Wow! Impressive! So I did that and then I ended up getting into BC, I got into BC off the wait list. This wasn't the school I was originally going to go to, I was originally going to go to the University of Miami but I ended up coming here off the wait list and I've enjoyed every moment of it. The only thing is, there wasn't a club tennis team when I got here. Especially coming in with COVID, I didn't know anybody being from Miami, I knew nobody else here and I had to make friends all over again. It was kind of, it was very anxiety-inducing, you just, it's a new place, new world and you're trying to make friends, especially navigating COVID, it's kind of a hard thing to do. And so with all the COVID restrictions and regulations that were going on and put on by BC, I felt very limited, I felt, I didn't feel like at home here and so I felt like tennis would be a way away from home if I could find it here. And so we talked to some people and we ended up finding some people and I was able to hit a little bit throughout the year. Sadly though, there was no club tennis to join. I ended up trying to apply with it for a club tennis here at BC with some friends. Oh wow, you're getting ahead of yourself here, I was going to ask you, wait, hold on. Well, thank you for describing your relation with tennis, I was going to ask you if you proposed a club tennis team but you got ahead of yourself there. So yes, so you proposed a club tennis team. What was the reaction? Did it pass? Oh, the react, like from BC? Yeah, what was the reaction? What was the response? The response, I mean, there was a very lackluster of a response. Wait, so how many times have you applied for a club tennis team, first of all? Definitely three times already. I mean, I was going to apply my senior year, but it just wasn't worth it at this point. Tell me about each time you've applied and what the reaction is from BC and BC Club Sports. Okay, so coming in with COVID freshman year, this is 2020. I applied with a friend of mine and we ended up getting rejected. We got rejected on the basis of COVID. And so they're saying, this is COVID time, we're not accepting any new clubs at this point, you can apply next year. And so, I mean, that's what I ended up doing. But I mean, it's just time goes on and you kind of forget about things. And in my class, actually career accelerator, we had to do some type of interview and we and for one of the questions that we're doing the interview for, is we had to propose like something that we would want to get out of or something we had hopes for in the future. And one of the hopes I had was playing tennis at BC, maybe club related, I didn't think I'd be good enough for the actual team, but I figured I'd be good enough for the club team. And so I talked about this in my interview. And one of my friends in the class and they actually ended up seeing it. His name was Christos and he really liked the idea that I was proposing there. And so he came up to me after class and stuff. He had a talk with me and he was like, we should so try to get tennis going. I'm a freshman here. I've always wanted to play tennis, but there was no club tennis here. So this was now my second attempt. So me and Christos got together, we started planning things out, what we wanted to do, who we were going to talk to. Figured it would be hard to go through campus recreation, so we tried to go through OSI. We ended up going through OSI and we met with Claire Ostrander. She was the director at the time. And we also brought some more friends on to show that there was an interest for club tennis here at BC. Talked to her for roughly three to four months, trying to organize the whole process, what we're going to do, what we needed and what our plan was. She loved all our ideas. She thought this was great and stuff and that this would be easily implementable. However, sometime during the summer, going into my junior year, she ended up saying that she was no longer being accommodated at club tennis due to construction going on at Conte Forum and volleyball players being on the courts. Oh, that's right. They replaced the tennis courts with volleyball courts. So that was her reason, temporary. Yeah, but they only did that for the fall semester. That wasn't going on during the spring semester. And tennis is a spring sport. So I mean, I didn't really see her reasoning, but she already said no. I was really sad. I was like, this sucks. This is going to be my junior year, my third year here at BC, and I can't play tennis. There's no community for tennis. There's nobody to talk to for tennis. I can't even organize matches to play with friends, either casually or anything like that. And so I was really bummed out. And I was like, crap, let me just do this myself. They say it can't be done. Let me just do it myself. Fun fact, I was there with Michael talking to Claire Ostrander. And that was a really sad time. We were so dedicated and excited about potentially going a different route. The student involvement. The office of student involvement. It needed to be more of a casual thing. So instead of being more like a club sport, this would just be a tennis club. So this would just be something casual where people can meet up and play tennis as a group. Versus playing competitively against other schools and whatnot. But now we'll go fast track into junior year. Me and Michael were pals. And we had what, a group of how many of us? It was a group of five of us. A group of five of us. I was calling ourselves a little bit the five founding fathers. You're the five founding fathers of this fake club, you guys. So I mean, I really like the idea. And I thought this is, screw it. I mean, you only live once. I came here to BC. I had leadership experience prior to this. And I was like, BC accepted me based off all my qualifications. I'm just doing what they would expect me to do here. Taking a leadership position and kind of trying to make the most of my experience here. So that's what I did. We ended up making some flyers, some word of mouth spread. We talked to different people. We set a day where everybody was going to come and we were all going to play tennis on the courts. Guys, we made a huge group meet and it exploded. But I don't want to get ahead of myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that year, the first time around, we had 50 people come. And these are 50 people on three outdoor courts. There's not enough courts for people that are here. And so it was kind of a bit of a mess. But I mean, people wanted to play either way. And they just loved the idea of getting together in a big group. This was just a new way to meet people from all different grades and majors and stuff. And it was so nice because I feel like, like you said, we were able to meet new people. And it was just so nice to talk to people who shared a love for tennis. Even if we weren't playing on the court because we physically couldn't fit on the court, it was just so nice to know we were all there for the same reason and we all wanted the same thing. Yeah, so we had the 50 people there. We made do. We played some little mini games here and there. We were off to a good start. And then we started getting to rhythm for this. It started shortening a little bit. We started having days dedicated to when we would play. So I would get there early because the tennis courts would be full from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. taken up by a tennis team. So I would get there maybe around like 6.15, 6.30. And I would wait for the tennis team to get off there. And then I would go play the course for myself. As I would wait for other people to arrive, which they would arrive around 7 p.m. And that would go on. We ended up playing three times a week, two hours a day. We were doing Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. It would vary sometimes. It was either two to three times a week. And who would be showing up to these practices? The majority of the people that were showing up, surprisingly, was a lot of freshmen and sophomores. This was a great outlet for them to meet new people and connect with others. And besides that, we also had some graduate students show up. And on top of that, we also had people from the clinics. People would pay for clinics here at BC. And sometimes they would have the course. Sometimes they wouldn't. And they would see this huge group of people playing tennis. And they were like, I want to be a part of that. I think that's another reason that BC got mad at us. Because a lot of the people from clinics, instead of going to the clinics, were coming with us. Even the people who were hosting the clinics, these staff members that were hosting the clinics and teaching the people how to play tennis, were even playing with us and giving us the go-ahead and helping us get the courts and stuff. Well, that's so nice. Look at everyone but BC helping us. Yeah, we had the coach of the tennis team give us some balls. Really? Yeah, he gave us balls that we could use and stuff. Because balls are expensive. When we first started, I had to buy baskets. And I had to buy a huge hundred balls. That's right. I can attest to that. Michael was putting his own money on the line in order to get kids to play together. I think that really just shows and portrays the true dedication Michael had to creating this and making this happen. It's kind of sad that BC can't help. But anyways. Yes, I mean, even with all the stuff they're saying we couldn't do and things like that, we were able to get it done. We were able to meet, we were able to play. And soon enough, people were kind of wanting to play more people. I wanted to have, actually, a competition between us. Just little tournaments, people all at BC. I actually emailed BC for the idea. I was like, oh, we should host a tournament. BC did not like that idea. They shot me down completely and said, do not host a tournament. Do not do anything competitive. I was like, what? This doesn't make sense. Even if it's just for fun, right? Even if it's just for fun. I mean, how can you play a sport and not be competitive? Yeah. That doesn't make sense to me. Any sport somebody wants to play, everybody wants to win. It's not like there's winners and losers. There are. I mean, it's all... Yeah, it'd be like recreational. It's fun. Yeah. I may have gone ahead with the tournament anyway. Oh. BC does not know about this one, though. Okay. Yeah. So BC never knew about that one. Professor, you get the secret intel from listening to this podcast. So we had a whole tournament. This was on the weekend. I think the tournament ended up taking place over two days just because we had so many people sign up and we had to manage so many different things. So we would have people play... I think it was best of pro sets. So it was up to eight. So it was basically one out of eight games. So we did that. That took a long time. We had, actually, two different brackets. We had singles and we had doubles. Doubles and compass, both. It was mixed doubles and regular doubles. And then singles with anybody else. And so we had the brackets together. We weren't able to do different genders just because it was too hard to manage. So we had everybody mixed together. But it was still a blast. So many people enjoyed it. We had a whole day there. We had music. We had food and stuff. We were all just hanging out, cheering each other on, watching the different games go on. And we also had a lot of time. So people would come whenever their match was scheduled. And so that was a lot of fun. But afterwards, a lot of people got a drive for more. They didn't want to just play people at BC. They wanted to play people out of the schools. We had friends that were out of the schools. We're also on the club teams there. And so we got into contact with our friends. And we decided it would be a good idea to organize a little meet up and hang out and go play tennis against them. And so that's what we ended up doing. We ended up playing Babson. We ended up playing Bentley. And we ended up playing Northeastern. Did you guys win? Yes. We beat Babson. We beat Bentley. And then we tied Northeastern. Wow. Incredible work. Northeastern was the one with the official club tennis team. And you still tied with them. Impressive. We still tied with them with an unofficial team. Wow. So you got this whole thing kind of up and running. What ever happened? Because, fun fact, I went abroad to Amsterdam. So I wasn't here for any of the falling out. But give us the rundown. Okay. So, I mean, people liked the tennis idea. They loved playing the other schools. And people were really excited and very passionate about it. They decided to make an Instagram to keep track of just what we did. So it was just like the memories we made along the way. It was more about the memories than just like the tennis. And what was the Instagram called, Michael? They decided to call it BC Tennis or whatever. It was called BC Tennis? Not even like... Yeah, it was like BC Club Tennis or whatever. BC Club Tennis. We claimed a name for us. Well, you guys claimed a name for yourselves. We had a name. We had t-shirts in the works. They had a logo that was there, an unofficial GC logo. Wow. You were full-fledged. Yeah. So, I mean, everything was good. But during the spring semester, it was too cold. We had to move into the indoor courts. Because of this, we got more notice. People were noticing all the people on the courts. We were playing music. And BC decided to be very sly. They found out about the Instagram just because word of mouth was spreading and stuff. There was a lot of followers. I think there was up to like 500 followers just on that account. They were just keeping track of like what we were doing, our victories over the schools, what our plans were and anything else that was going on. We also had a group name which had up to 350 members. And so we had about 50 active members and about 350 members that were like interested in playing but maybe didn't go all the time. And so during one of our practices inside on the courts, two staff members approached our group and asked who was playing the music or whose speaker that was. It being my speaker, I said it was mine and stuff. They took down my information and my ELID. And I also had friends that worked in campus rec and stuff. And they just had to flex. And they started telling me what was going on and like how they might be trying to get somebody in trouble for it. And how they might be wanting to shut it down. So I, realizing this, had to cancel practice and put like everything kind of on a hiatus to try to figure out what was going on. Because I didn't want to get them more in trouble just in case they were coming after me. That must have been kind of scary. It was. It was. And like a week and a half later, we got like an email. It was like confidential, whatever, this or that. And it says, you have been found like guilty of failure to comply. Something with like BC paraphernalia and stuff like that. Like misuse of that. It kind of sounds really intense for just playing tennis with a group of people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had a hearing date and stuff. I had to also go have a meeting with the dean. We talked about it. And then there was also over 30 documents of evidence they were trying to get me with. I hope everyone listening, or just you, Professor, has your mouth dropped right now. How crazy that punishment is. Just for a group of kids, you know, coming together and playing tennis and having a good time. I think that's absolutely insane. So I mean, I got lucky that I was able to get my hands on those documents. So I was able to look through each document. And this was like a full on court hearing. But I was freaking out. Because I honestly, I didn't trust the dean. The dean was like, oh, I'm on your side or whatever. I mean, I don't know. Anything I tell the dean can be used against me. So I was like, man, I can't talk to the dean. I got to talk to other people. So I went and I talked to my professors. I talked to my marketing professors. I talked to my business professors. And then I even talked to some law professors. About what? Just some advice? About just what to do. Because this is the whole situation. Because I mean, there was nothing in the Code of Conduct about what I was doing. And so their sanctions on me, what could have been, were from probation, to suspension, to expulsion. Oh, no. That would have been horrible. Yeah, yeah. You must have been like really scared. I would have been. Yeah, I was like, crap, I really got to figure this out. Like, I mean, what's the best way to go here? So I got information about what the hearing process was like from other professors and other administrators that I knew. I talked to my counselor. And I got a lot of different advice from different people. And I talked to the lawyers there. They said that they couldn't really give me information, but it was on the DL and stuff. And they just gave me some advice on how to handle the situation and what to do. And they told me that my best bet was to have an opening statement to kind of confront the evidence firsthand and to apologize. So what did you do? An opening statement? And how long was it, Michael? Oh, the opening statement. So, I mean, with the 30 pages of documents, I mean, I had to get ahead of each one. He had a lot to defend himself for, you guys. He was held at gunpoint, basically. Yeah, basically. They're holding 30 different documents over my head in different emails and what I had sent. My conversations with Claire and saying that I went back on my word or whatever. They told me not to do this, even though they already didn't tell me not to do this. And things like that. Guys, I read this and he was extremely, extremely passionate about trying to defend himself. And it was really good. I mean, you really, you really did the job of preemptive action. Yeah, I mean, I had to get ahead of it first because I wanted them to understand my point of view and my thoughts on this whole entire thing before they even made up their mind about me. So I decided to give them the whole rundown, like I've just done here, kind of more on a detailed basis. And I talked about different things because they were trying to give me liability issues because sometimes we took Ubers over there to go to the meetings. Oh my goodness. They were mad at you for taking Ubers? Yeah, they said it wasn't safe. There was a car accident and stuff. They were getting mad at BC. BC would get sued. Oh, but let's say somebody had... They're not making a club team, so what do they expect us to do? If they allowed us to make a club team, they could provide us buses. But since they're not, we're going to have to do alternatives like Ubers. So I just think that's so hypocritical. But the other thing too is, I mean, this is something we're doing on our own free time. This is extracurricular. This doesn't really have anything to do with BC. We're BC students. I mean, we're not really representing BC in terms of what they're thinking what we're doing. So, I mean, we're just doing, we're just hanging out on our own time. It's like me going into Boston. Yeah, we Uber all the time as students. Like they can't control that. They were getting mad at me for that, for like liability issues, for going out of my way and hanging out with people from other schools saying that this is misrepresenting BC and stuff like that. So I was like, what? I was very confused. Besides that, they're saying, oh, we weren't CPR certified or whatever, even though some of us might have been. And then besides that, it's like, oh, a fight broke out. I mean, fights don't usually break out in tennis. Oh, somebody gets hurt. They're stretching here. They're stretching. What happens if somebody gets hurt? Nobody CPR... I'm like, the worst somebody can get playing tennis is like really a twisted ankle. Yeah. Like a scraped knee. So it was just, it was really crazy to me to see the lengths that they're going. Everything was just stretched. Like it just didn't make sense to me. We're adults. We're over 18. Some of us are 20. Some of us are 21, 22 or whatever. Yeah. We're just living our life. And then they're doing that. It was... What was the conclusion of this hearing? So for the hearing, I had to bring... So they gave me a hold of the chief doctors after I talked to the dean. The hearing was supposed to be from 9 a.m. all the way to about 12 p.m. So this was a three hour meeting and the meeting ended up being about three and a half hours. Oh my goodness. I had an opening statement. The opening statement I think was maybe six pages or whatever. Six pages. I brought in witnesses to question that they questioned and I questioned. Then they had conversations with me discussing all the different things there. But the overall result of the hearing was that I just kind of got a slap on the wrist. I just was on probation. I was on disciplinary probation or whatever. So what comes with disciplinary probation? Like what happened? Like just what I mean. So it's not academic probation. It was more... It was conduct probation. Oh, okay. So it's like if you do one more thing wrong... They can kick me out. They can kick you out. Guys, can you imagine getting kicked out of B.C. or potentially for trying to play tennis? This is crazy. And then afterwards they wouldn't even let me play with more than four people. Why? What do you mean? Like in the rest of your B.C. experience? The rest of my B.C. experience because they said if I was playing with more than four people they would consider I was organizing something, coordinating events and having people play. So they would get me in trouble for doing the same thing. Because they would consider me playing with other people the same thing as what I did just now. Because they considered it a club tennis team. Oh, goodness. Afterwards, I didn't really pick up a racket anymore. I was just like, this is just messed up. Michael, I'm so sorry. That's actually horrible that that happened. Yeah, because I couldn't play indoors. I basically had... You know when they do for the... They're blacklisted. I was blacklisted. He was blacklisted from B.C. I was blacklisted. Unofficially blacklisted. I couldn't get any leadership roles in any types of clubs. Are you serious? Any types of sports-related clubs, I was not allowed leadership roles because of what I did here. Furthermore, if there ever was a club tennis team here, I was not allowed to be on it. Wow. So let's say they ever did create one for a senior year. You wouldn't be able to be on it. I wouldn't be able to be on it. I would maybe have to go through some hoops. But I'd be unofficially blacklisted from that. I'm not allowed in any leadership positions for the clubs. Any club sports and stuff like that just because of what I did prior. Anybody that was associated with me was also blacklisted unofficially. So technically me. If they knew I was running it with you, I'd be blacklisted. This is crazy. Even the freshmen I played with and stuff are potentially blacklisted. So even in the senior year, if there was a club tennis team, I'd be able to play on the club team. It's almost a decade to where they haven't had a club tennis team here. Somehow it seems as if it's going to continue based on their reactions here. This is crazy. The worst part is too, since this hasn't been going on since I was at the forefront of this, nobody submitted a proposal for a club tennis team this year. So there won't be a club tennis team next year. So no one proposed a club tennis team this year? Yeah, nobody proposed one, so there won't be one next year. Not a single person has proposed a tennis team this year? Nope, so there will not be one next year at all. How do you know that no one's proposed one? What if a freshman did? Because I had friends who afterwards, they tried to submit a proposal and they were rejected because it wasn't on time. It wasn't on time? It was like two days later or whatever. It was like, oh, I can't help you anymore. Too bad. Apply next year. It seems like there's a little hope for club tennis here at BC. But you've got to do something to change it. Well, we tried, but it's up to the New Year's perspective students. So do you still play, or how has senior year been treating you ever since all this commotion? Well, actually, since that commotion happened, they brought on intramural tennis. Oh, that's right! Are you doing intramural tennis? I already lost this round here. But last year when they brought intramural tennis, after they got me in trouble for playing tennis, I was so pissed off at BC as an FU to BC, I ended up winning the intramural club tennis and I have a mug. You have a mug? I have a mug. You guys, you won intramural club tennis. Yeah. Congratulations. That was my dream. Intramurals are the best thing that we're going to get for tennis. Yeah, it's the most I might do. I don't know if they do anymore. But even intramurals are the worst because you only play up to three games. Yeah, three games. How can you play three games for a sport that's just like that? I mean, if one person messed up on a serve, you already lost the game. The majority of the time, especially at a high level of tennis, you're not breaking people's serves. If you're off to a rough start, you're already kind of lost. And there's no ads or anything, there's no advantage. It's terrible. Have you been playing recreationally? With your friends still this year? I'm trying to play more this year. Last year, I took more of a hiatus just because of that. I wasn't in the mood anymore. I was like, ugh. Yeah, I don't blame you. But yeah, I'm starting to play more again. Okay. Well, thank you so much for all this information. I know it's probably a lot to have to run through it again. It's probably anxiety-inducing for you. I hope you continue to play and enjoy it again. I mean, we're leaving BC. We're graduating! I know, I know. I'm super excited. Yeah, literally in three weeks. May 20th and it's April 30th. That's so crazy. That's so crazy. Well, thank you again, Michael. Awesome. Thank you so much, Sophia. It was a pleasure.
