Stanford Intramural Sports Program brings recreational athletics to students

 

Athletics at Stanford conjure up images of Division I varsity teams, competitive club sports or our official mascot, the Cardinal. However, the teams “Gazebo Gorillas” or “Donnersaurs” are also in the realm of Stanford athletics. These intramural sports teams are two of more than 1,000 other uniquely named teams.

 

As part of its mission statement, the Intramurals Sports Program “recognizes the need of a recreational environment” for Stanford students, a goal that Travis Jew, coordinator of intramural sports, aims to fulfill.

 

Jew joined the Intramural Sports Program 18 months ago and became the head of the program in October.

 

“I had a passion for intramurals because I used to play them all the time as an undergrad in college,” Jew said.

 

The first part of Jew’s vision was initiating a new online system of registration and communication.

 

“Our goal is to interact with students, and for the teams to communicate more with each other,” Jew said.

 

Launched this winter quarter, the system includes features such as most valuable player awards for each game and an online message board. One of the bigger improvements is cutting down on forfeits with the ability to reschedule games, which is facilitated by the online system.

 

The new online system is only one improvement in the larger scope of the program. According to Jew, another principal need is to reach out to more students by offering a wider variety of sports.

 

“There is a huge need to appeal to every student on campus,” Jew said. “Not everybody likes basketball. Not everybody plays volleyball. Not everybody knows how to throw a Frisbee. [But] we are trying to get every student plugged into at least one sport.”

 

In an effort to address this issue, the program now offers new sports, while still maintaining the classics such as basketball, volleyball and soccer.

 

“[We have] different sports for people who aren’t comfortable with the traditional sports and can now play some fun, wacky sport,” Jew said.

 

Broomball, added this quarter, is an example of such a “fun, wacky sport.” The sport is very similar to ice hockey except that the participants run in tennis shoes and play with “brooms,” or square-shaped plastic sticks.

 

Timothy Szwarc M.S. ’09 Ph.D. ’15, who played broomball as an undergraduate at Cornell University, where hockey fans and ice rinks abound, now plays through Stanford Intramurals.

 

“It’s fun to see students who can write award-winning papers be able to score a goal in broomball and celebrate winning a game,” Szwarc said.

 

Despite being nontraditional, a recent intramural broomball tournament had more than 90 participants.

 

Since 2006, there have been six new league sports introduced into the program, including inner tube water polo, billiards, squash, table tennis and badminton. This expansion is now looking to include the virtual world.

 

“We are looking at interactive games like Xbox 360 Connect because a lot of people play videogames and don’t play intramurals,” Jew said. “You are still playing a sport, just virtually.”

 

Senior Associate Athletic Director Eric Stein agreed with Jew about the program’s improvement. According to Stein, much of this progression can be attributed to new staffing and leadership. Stein came to Stanford in 2006, and the first full-time director of intramural sports was appointed one year later.

 

Following the introduction of a full-time director, a position currently held by Jew, the number of teams has grown by 62.5 percent, games by 130 percent and participants by 4 percent.

 

“When I first came here, we had just won our twelfth straight Director’s Cup [from the National Association of College Directors of Athletics],” Stein said, adding that he felt that that year marked an institutional transition in the attention paid to intramural sports at Stanford.

 

Participants in the competitive and recreational intramural sports leagues vary in age, skill level and athletic background.

 

“When I was in high school, I did track,” Szwarc said. “I came to college and wasn’t able to maintain the same time commitment to varsity sports. I had this need to get out there and play sports where the level of competition is still really high.”

 

Like Szwarc, Rebecca Amato ’14 has been involved in sports since high school and became involved in intramurals during her freshman year.

 

“Before I came to Stanford, I researched intramural sports, and for my dorm’s government elections, they mentioned that one position was intramurals coordinator,” Amato said.

 

Now, both Szwarc and Amato are involved in several sports throughout the year. For both, intramurals have great benefits.

 

“It’s a break from our busy lives as students,” Amato said. “It’s nice to get on a team and have fun and then go back to your routine.”

 

Szwarc points out that the intramural teams fill the space between solo exercise and varsity-level practice.

 

“It gives a reason to go out and compete,” Szwarc said. “You can train for an event or run for fun, but it’s something else to have a game, a bracket and a league. It’s having something at stake, being part of something more.”