There was a letter to the editor by Michael Bruce ’08 in the March 9 issue of The Polytechnic dealing with a particular tale of woe regarding the intramural sports department at RPI. The events detailed by Bruce indicate a lack of opportunity among interested athletes to play the sport of their choice. This is a major problem facing the department, but I believe it only scratches the surface.
I play three intramural sports: gym hockey (of which I’ve been a captain for five semesters now), softball, and ice hockey. My experiences in each of these have been marred by a number of issues. First and foremost, the issue of teams not showing up to play games is particularly annoying. Not only does this inconvenience the team that does show up, but it’s downright enraging when the other team can’t even be bothered to give advance notice of their forfeiture. Plus, the points made by folks like Bruce are only made stronger when things like this happen; there are so many athletes unable to play because of team limits, while other teams that get in can’t even be bothered to show. What gives?
There are also staff issues. This is the first semester since I’ve been playing gym hockey that referees are actually there more often than not. The ice hockey team I play on was also forced to play a shorter game—in the playoffs, no less—because no referees showed up.
There have also been numerous incidents in many sports of coordinators for respective leagues not performing up to par. Some have bungled the scheduling process, either making biased schedules or nonsensical and unbalanced ones. Others have looked the other way while undesirable activities have taken place in the leagues. Examples of this include underage drinking by spectators and other violations of the intramural department’s alcohol policy, the use of ineligible players, or the general apathy of some officials toward calling penalties. Others still have even made enemies among the players in their leagues.
Additionally, I’ve never encountered a coordinator—save one—that provided regular standings for any league I’ve ever participated in. Some people take intramural sports very seriously; is it really too much to ask to have regular standings issued? There’s always a big deal if a team forgets to report a score, but when coordinators aren’t keeping teams informed about the league, what recourse is there for teams? Attempts to meet with the directors of the intramural department are often met coolly and unresponsively.
My personal examples are just several of a litany of reasons why changes need to happen in the RPI intramural department. I encourage everyone to write in with similar concerns you have experienced, both to us, at The Polytechnic at sports@poly.rpi.edu, and the intramural department itself.
