The days of standing in the cold with your friends at 5 a.m. on the first day of the quarter to sign up for an intramural team are almost over.
Intramural sports registration will be done online starting in September, said Don Stenta, director of Recreational Sports.
Stenta told The Lantern that due to the long registration line and chaos, Rec Sports created a “Ticketmaster-like” program for students to sign up for the intramural sports team of his or her choice, Stenta said.
“We used to just tell people intramural sign-ups start at 7 a.m. and we’d show up and there would be lines of students all over the place,” Stenta said. “People would be sitting on the floor waiting and it was a mess.”
The online registration will give students a five-minute time slot that they can log-in and add the names of teammates and pay for the team.
“There won’t be any kind of in-line process,” Stenta said. “We wanted to increase customer satisfaction, and I believe this is the way to do it.”
Bonnie Mitchell, intramural sports coordinator, said the reasoning for the switch was to keep up with technology and to eliminate the long lines.
“This creates a system where students can pick out what sport they want to play, where they want to play it, what time of the day they want to play it and they can pick out a team, all from home,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell said no official statement has been made about the switch yet, though she said students have voiced they want an online system.
“Students were arriving very early to sign up and the system was inefficient,” she said.
Brandon Edwards, chair of the Recreational Sports committee representing the Undergraduate Student Government, said the switch is a great move for students.
“We’re giving students a lot more opportunities to participate in our programming,” Edwards said. “They don’t have to deal with the hassle and pain of registering.”
Nate Brown, a second-year in sport and leisure studies, said an online registration system would be convenient for him and other intramural players.
“It’s always been a pain trying to work around classes and workouts to go sign in,” Brown said. “Online would make it so much quicker and easier.”
Stenta said the department will try piloting for spring and summer, but the program will officially begin Autumn Semester.
“We decided to make it in sync with the semester conversion,” Stenta said. “That way we wouldn’t have to try out two different programs and we only had to make one.”
Recreational Sports already has tried to make the signing-up process better for students, Stenta said.
“We rearranged our space and staff to accommodate the student interest,” he said. “We provided refreshments, we’d play music and provide seating for the line.”
Edwards said students have given very positive feedback on the changes.
“This is a great example of Dr. Stenta and his team being receptive to our student voice,” Edwards said. “We are thankful for that.”
