New UW Intramural Sports Coordinator, Christopher Lee is seeking students to join the exciting and social community that is intramurals.
Lee is dedicating time to keep the history and tradition of the intramural establishment at UW alive and well. While at the same time looking for areas to enhance in order for the program to be bigger, better and overall great for everyone.
For the fall semester UW is offering 25 intramural sports to compete in. These range from continuous league play to one-day tournaments. So far 14 events have passed by the first half of the semester with 11 sports remaining in the second half of the semester.
There are seven total leagues being offer this semester. So far Flag Football, Outdoor Soccer, and Ultimate Frisbee have wrapped up. The four remaining leagues are Volleyball, 3-on-3 Basketball, Walleyball and Racquetball Singles.
Volleyball and Basketball offer men’s and women’s leagues along with competitive and recreational leagues. Walleyball and Racquetball are open to any gender and are split between competitive and recreational leagues.
Throughout the semester there are several one-day tournaments including a free throw contest, Badminton Singles, Curling and a few others.
Lee has different responsibilities when organizing a league or a one-day tournament. Most of the leagues are officiated by a staff of students.
Leagues that use student officials are Flag Football, Outdoor Soccer, Basketball, and Volleyball. For the previously listed sports, Lee must train the officials he has on staff and prepare their schedules.
For the one-day sports, intramural supervisors are on sight to oversee those events and officiate if needed.
“If the sport is officiated verses not officiated there is clearly more that goes in to programing and planning that,” Lee said.
The league sports may have more logistics to them, but single day events are often made up of special interest groups.
There might be a smaller population interested in league play which makes it hard to gain a lot of interest in the sports.
“Really the hardest thing for all of them, and this is across the country with any intramural or rec sport program is getting the word out,” Lee said.
This is especially difficult if people are not going to Half Acre regularly or do not see the posters around campus. To combat this Lee has started to table in the student union and at Half Acre to help spread the information.
“When I first got here over the summer I did not have a plan in place for tabling or face to face communicating with folks,” Lee said.
Over the past two weeks Lee has changed this by tabling in the Union and inside of Half Acre.
Lee believes this is the best way to gain more interest in intramural sports. There may only be a couple of people that will stop by, but Lee can give them the need-to-know information of upcoming events and how to sign up for teams.
From there Lee hopes the information is spread between friends helping spread the news of intramurals.
Lee first became involved with intramurals during his undergraduate years at the University of North Dakota.
“I started out officiating Ice Hockey, Flag Football, and a few different sports and really loved it!” Lee exclaimed. “I liked that I could make money doing something I love.”
Following his undergraduate years Lee was able to become a graduate assistant at the University of Wisconsin for two years which boosted his resume resulting in getting hired by UW to be the new Intramural Sports Coordinator.
“I really enjoyed the place, it is very welcoming, and I feel like I fit in pretty well here,” Lee said.
Lee is a big fan of hockey and would like to try to implement more Ice Hockey to the intramural sports at UW. To accomplish this, he is going to start a broom ball league at a later date and is in contact with the local Ice Arena in hopes of working out a deal to make the rink more accessible to UW students who are interested in hockey.
