If you didn’t receive an athletic scholarship to play sports for UW-Whitewater this year, you’re not entirely out of luck.
Thanks to the intramural sports program, students can participate in just about any sport imaginable.

Whether it’s floor hockey, inner tube water polo, table tennis, or competing in a disc golf or bags tournament, students have an opportunity to get exercise and meet friends by participating in intramurals.

Some of the more popular sports are flag football, basketball and softball. The number of students that participate in an intramural sport over the course of the year ranges from about 3,000 to 4,000 students according to Intramural Director James Friel . He said the numbers are growing each year.

“This fall for flag football, we should get about 70 teams,” Friel said. “For softball, about 40, then for basketball, about 130 to 140 teams.”
Students that want to gain experience in officiating an intramural sport can apply in the spring semester. Officials have already been hired for the fall semester. Over 100 officials are hired each year.

Senior Trent Padovich has competed in ultimate Frisbee as well as basketball and said intramural sports are a great way to be active and play a sport with friends.

“It’s a good way to forget about school for a couple of hours,” Padovich said. “I can get a team together with a bunch of my friends and hopefully win a shirt.”

The shirts are given out at the end of each intramural sport season to the champions of that given sport. The champion shirts are a way to showcase the best of the best and give students bragging rights for an entire year.

“It would be really cool to be able to walk around campus and have everyone know that you are the champion of a sport,” Padovich said. “[Winning a shirt] has been one of my goals for the past couple of years.”

“A sport for everyone and everyone in a sport” is the motto for the intramural sports program at UW-Whitewater. Friel said the goal is to get every student involved in something.

“If we don’t have a sport that a student’s interested in, we would definitely be willing to sit down and have a conversation to see if there’s a way that we can add it,” Friel said. “[Intramural sports] is one of the best things to do in-between or after classes. It’s also one of the best things to do to relieve stress or release a competitive edge a student might have.”

To compete in an intramural sport, students can fill out a form found at the Recreation Sports office and turn it in to room 100 in the Williams Center. The earliest due date for entry forms is today for indoor soccer and indoor ultimate frisbee.

Costs range from sport to sport, and luckily for college students, none come at a harsh price. Some sports cost as much as $35 per team, while others are free to join.

The official website for the intramural sports program can be found at www.uww.edu/recsports/intramurals.

More information can also be found on Twitter at twitter.com/UWWIntramurals as well as on Facebook at “UW-Whitewater Intramural Sports.”