One thing that is conducted at Tech every semester that involves campus recreation is intramural sports. This is also a way to get students involved in some type of sport activity. Intramurals will look different this year with the coronavirus going around.
“Obviously we had to change the types of sports we offer for the fall semester. Typically we’d have a few other large scale team sports, example flag football is a fan favorite,”said Leslie Fralix, coordinator for intramural sports. “But for this semester, because of campus masks requirements we felt it was best to choose things that participants could wear masks safely and if they were exercising to a certain extent it wouldn’t overexert them,” Fralix added.
The fan favorites of flag football and ultimate frisbee will try to be played in the spring, according to Fralix.
Students have been wondering since the start of the semester what sports will be offered during this time. Due to Center for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines students have already figured that flag football and ultimate frisbee will more than likely not be played this fall.
“We are limiting what we are allowing students to play. So we are having stuff like: cornhole, badminton, 3-point shootout competitions, esports, and we are going to have softball starting next month,” Spencer Ryan, assistant coordinator of intramural sport, said. “Softball and sand volleyball are two of the things with team sports that we are going to do, but other than that we are trying to limit interaction and trying to social distance,” Ryan added.
With certain sports not happening until later on, possibly the springtime, certain guidelines and regulations are being enforced.
“Obviously social distancing, masks everywhere and there’s going to be a ton of signage reminding you to space out. We’re going to have an entrance only and an exit only area so people aren’t going to be crossing paths… as far as sport guidelines go we’re in line with what the governor is recommending, obviously those are based off of CDC guidelines. … also just making sure that we are conscious about the amount of time an employee or participant would spend in close contact with people and making sure that we minimize that as much as possible,” said Fralix.
Officials this year will also have a different appearance this year. Officials will have to wear masks just like the people competing. Intramurals provided electronic whistles to officials this year to avoid any possible substances being blown off of the whistle and coming into contact with participants.
Even though intramurals will be looking different this year with the pandemic taking place, they are still happening. Since intramurals are still going on, there will still be winners of competitions which means people can still have bragging rights throughout the semester. They are having more competitions that are shorter, which allow more students to become an intramural champion.
