By Jeremy Moore/campus news editor
Collegian file photos
Last semester, SE Campus had record-breaking numbers in intramural sports. Despite the success, SE along with every campus has challenges getting people interested in intramurals.
SE intramural sports coordinator Shahzad Nazir credits consistency to the program’s success.
“We try to make sure our events are always structured,” he said. “We hire the same officials that we always do, and we keep our formats the same as we always do.”
Nazir also reaches out to many student clubs and organizations for participation. He believes that the biggest contributor to the program’s growth may be because of how the word around campus spreads.
“Students really look for opportunities to play, practice and have fun,” he said.
Nevertheless, there are a few challenges that SE and other campuses face. According to Nazir, facilities are one of the main challenges for SE. For their basketball court to be regulation size, it would have to expand 16 feet. There also isn’t anywhere for onlookers to sit in the gym.
South intramural sports coordinator J.T. Henderson said the program did grow a little last semester, but he would still like to see increased participation.
“Now that we have access to a couple of fields, more students have come out for soccer and football,” he said.
In the future, Henderson would like to see cross-campus intramural events. He believes that something like a intercampus basketball tournament would be a great event that would get plenty of participation.
This semester, TR Campus has a strength and endurance competition March 5, but this is its only event. Fitness center director Nick Giovannitti feels that location is one of the biggest challenges TR Campus faces.
“We don’t have any fields or basketball courts,” he said. “Our campus is just more academic-based.”
NW health and physical education instructor Ryan Stewart tries to make sure students know about the events that the campus has coming up.
“We put our fliers on the activity and video boards,” he said. “Our best source of advertisement, though, is word of mouth.”
Although NW Campus advertises well, Stewart believes students’ conflicting schedules is what hurts participation.
“Most of the time students are just very busy,” he said. “They’re interested in what we have going on, but they usually have other things they need to take care of.”
NE Campus offers basketball, volleyball, swimming and other sports for students, but the scheduled times for these sports take place while many students are in class.
