School clubs can be powerful learning spaces in which adolescents thrive academically, socially, and psychologically. However, in the Moroccan context, research on how students experience club participation— and on the obstacles they face—remains scarce. Therefore, this study aims to fill that gap by examining the challenges that scientific-stream secondary school students report encountering in school clubs. To achieve this objective, a corpus of 116 student emails produced for the 2026 Unified National Baccalaureate writing task, in which scientific-stream candidates were asked to explain the challenges they face in school clubs, was analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s six-phase thematic analysis framework. Based on this analysis, four major challenge clusters emerged: academic overload and time poverty; resource deficits (financial, material, and limited club diversity); psychosocial and interpersonal barriers; and governance, institutional management, and access constraints. Taken together, these clusters show that students experience non-participation not as a simple scheduling inconvenience but as a compounding disadvantage embedded in curriculum design, resource scarcity, social exclusion, and institutional neglect. Consequently, the findings indicate that expanding club provision alone is insufficient; rather, clubs must also be adequately resourced, realistically scheduled, competently led, and inclusively governed. Furthermore, the study carries practical implications for Morocco’s current education reform agenda and supports the development of a coherent, club-oriented school policy.