The University of South Florida Australian Rules Football Club
The USF Footy club 100% a part of the Florida Redbacks footy club. We hold our training together, and our association with USF Australian Football has brought youth and excitement to the Redbacks.
USF Footy was started in August of 2005 by USF Footy President, Danny Harrison. Danny was born in Sydney to an Australian father and American mother. While he grew up in the US, he always valued his family and cultural ties to Australia.
2004 saw Danny find and start playing with the Redbacks, and was constantly urged by teammates to recruit other students to the club. Back then, the Redbacks practiced in downtown Tampa at Riverfront park. However, the Redbacks were booted from the field by the City in the last bit of the summer of 2005 due to the field to becoming a Boys & Girls official sports ground.
With school being hectic as it is, Danny had not yet taken the time to make fliers or attempt to speak to a large amount of random people about footy, other than his friends. So, oddly enough, once the Redbacks got kicked off the downtown field and lost several regulars, Danny decided to form a USF club - to spread the word of footy on campus. This allowed the Redbacks to to dive into a large pool of students to attempt to recruit and spread word about footy to the Tampa area.
Danny was also the winner of a USAFL scholarship to spend a semester in Sydney Australia, playing footy for the Macquarie University club, taking classes and experiencing life in Sydney. More recently, Cameron Freeman also won the 2008 Macquarie Scholarship, so USF Footy not only offers an opportunity to students to experience a whole new exciting sport, but the opportunity to expand their cultural horizons and study abroad.
We've had numerous students come out and play. Everyone loves the sport once they have come out and witnessed the excitement and thrill of playing. Currently we have up to 20 USF students that come out and train. Our Captain, CJ Morton, is a USF student. With these students and hopefully more, we hope to travel to other universities around the country to play matches and tourneyments. Other universities that are currently competing in collegiate Australian football are Vanderbilt University, Beltmont Uni., Winsconsin-Milwaukee, NC State, and UNC-Chapel Hill, among others.
We are looking forward to a future of USF footy with many more students who come out and experience Aussie Rules footy. From this we can travel and get some awesome experience against quality collegiate footy teams around the country. And lastly, more social events will be occurring more often so the students can relax and get to know each other and develop lasting friendships.
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