IM Sports: If You Build It, They Will Come…or Is It The Other Way Around.

This spring, we were faced with the challenge of not having enough teams sign up for two different programs–women’s basketball and monarchy volleyball. The latter is fairly new and understandable why many would be intimidated by concept. The women’s division, on the other hand, should have been easy to fill given the over 7,000 female students we have on campus right? WRONG. We only had two teams signed up for each one–and one of them was a free agent team comprised of students wanting to participate, but did not have a team. The easy way out would have been to just not offer those programs…BUT that’s not what our staff is here for. We SINCERELY want to #REC the lives of all the students on campus, if possible, but we’re very much happy to be able to provide our services to the students who make their way to our facilities with the hopes of finding FUN and even some FITNESS. In the case of these two programs–we built it…but not many came.

We did not let that be the end of the story though. Having staff members who had direct interactions with students, we KNEW that there were enough students who wanted to play.  Knowing that we had enough participants for…something and having staff members who were familiar with different formats–we came up with two new programs to keep these students involved! This semester, we started the Queens of the Court format for Women’s Basketball and Blind Draw League for Volleyball.

Both formats do not require for people to sign up as a team. It is actually easier when they sign up as individuals so we do not have to worry about keeping two people together when we create combinations. For the Queens of the Court Women’s Basketball games, we currently have a pool of 13-15 women and we have over 30 men/women signed up to be part of the leagues. There are 6 regular season games scheduled for women’s basketball and volleyball games are offered every Sunday from 7pm to 10pm. Each game, we create two teams with different combination of participants from the pool. Everybody plays with and against everybody!

So far, we have received positive reviews from participants. They like the fact that they get to meet new people and even play against their friends! We have yet to have a forfeit which tells us that people like coming to the games! They came…and so we built THIS. In case you would like to be part of it, it is never too late to join with this format. You might have less games…BUT YOU’LL HAVE JUST AS MUCH FUN! Let us #RECYourLife!

For more information, please contact Freddie Lipata via email at LipataF@cofc.edu.

 

 

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