Intramurals are seen by many students as a way to relieve stress, find work and make friends through their time in college.
At the University of Central Missouri there are 29 different Intramural sports. Adam Berschneider, Graduate Assistant of Intramural Sports says that each sport is divided into different leagues and tournaments, which are further divided into divisions. The divisions are not skill based, however.
“It’s all based on what league you want to play in and what your time preferences and availability is,” Berschneider said.
There are also a variety of ways for a student to get involved in intramurals. For one, they can join their dorm team, get a group of friends together or if they are a fraternity or sorority member, their organization might have a team. There is also a free agent system for those without a team who still want to play. This system, run through, imleagues.com, where teams register to play, allows a team that is missing a player to pick one up.
“You can sign up yourself as a free agent. And then what happens is if I’m a team captain on a team, and I am one or two players short, I can go to the free agents tab and say, hey, this person is looking for a team,” said Bergscheider. There are also other reasons as to why students may be interested in inturmurals.
Intramurals can be a primarily a stress reliever. “It can be a huge stress reliever. You know, we’re all in college. We all have busy schedules with test projects, homework,” Bergschneider said. “Have fun, forget about the stressful part of being a college student, just have fun.”
Intramurals can also provide a job opportunity for students. According to Bergschneider, “All of our referees are student officials, both undergraduate and graduate students. They work for our department and then we host annual training sessions for every sport.”
Student Referee, Luke Roepe, explained what exactly happens in these training sessions. According to Roepe, it is a combination of classroom and on the court training. “We’ll have two days of two hour training inside a classroom here at the Rec. The third day we’ll have our training on the court and have two teams come to practice scrimmage,” Roepe said.
For some, intramurals can also be a way for students to make lasting memories. Jackson Nimmo, a UCM graduate student and intramural basketball competitor traveled with the team to compete in the National Intramural Recreational Sports Association Region IV Basketball Tournament at the University of Missouri-Columbia last February.
“Last year in February, we went to Columbia, and we got to go there and we represented UCM,” Nimmo said. “We played against like Texas A&M, Texas and Mizzou, and we ended up getting third in the basketball tournament in their rec center.”
Jackson explained how the team came together as, Kevin Sneed, the Assistant Director of Intramural and Recreation, pitched the idea to him. Together they combined two intramural teams and went to compete in Columbia.
