Gage Johnson
Editor-in-chief
While the pandemic caused the cancellation of intramural sports like softball and flag football, Murray State is finding new ways to keep intramurals going this fall.
In order to keep the intramural experience at peak form for returning and incoming students, Director of Campus Recreation and Wellness Travis Rawe and his staff decided upon new intramural sports.
Those sports include golf, disc golf, tennis and cornhole. The aforementioned sports will be leagues that have weekly games rather than one-day events.
Golf will be a two-person team league in which teams play against each other for nine holes every Tuesday night at the Miller Memorial Golf Course. Rawe said that golf clubs will be provided.
“It’s only nine holes because we’re starting in the evening so we probably won’t be able to get 18 in,” Rawe said. “It’s only $15 a person, which is the league rate for that course.”
There are six tee times with 12 team slots available, so if a student is interested and spots are filled they will be put on a waiting list. If there’s high demand, Rawe said they will look at the possibility of adding more time slots.
Disc golf will be offered as an individual league in which students can compete in groups of four at Central Park. Rawe said that discs will be provided if wanted or needed.
“That’ll be offered Monday through Thursday,” Rawe said. “Teams will have the opportunity to fill out time preferences for when they want to go play.”
Tennis will be offered in singles and doubles matches, with men’s, women’s and co-ed leagues available.
Matches will be played on Thursdays and Fridays at the Bennie Purcell Tennis Courts from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m., and teams will have to sign up for specific times to play.
Cornhole is also a new intramural sport, and the men’s and women’s leagues will consist of two-person teams and play on Thursdays.
“You can play anywhere from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.,” Rawe said. “You’ll have a 6 p.m. start time or a 7 p.m. start time, and the reason we’re doing that is because you’re going to play two cornhole matches in that hour, so there will be four teams scheduled every hour and then you’ll play a round robin.”
A team kickball league was added to the list of fall intramural sports recently, after Rawe had initially planned to not offer any large team sports.
Rawe said they felt as though this was something they could offer and enforce social distancing enough to allow it and keep students safe.
It will be a traditional league with Greek, residential and open leagues that will be offered Monday through Thursday. There’s currently no set schedule.
All of these leagues will last five weeks with playoffs at the end, aside from golf. Golf will be a nine-week league and in the ninth week they will let people know what the standings look like and what they will have to shoot to win.
When it comes to guidelines for intramural sports, Rawe said it depends on the sport and where some of the sports are held given that some are off-campus and those locations will have their own guidelines.
“As we always do, we’ll send emails out with any information regarding sport rules, especially those with off-campus and with the parks because those rules are a little different than our rules,” Rawe said. “Before leagues start anyone who’s signed up will get those rules and the very specific ones in regards to COVID, but also just different rules for what intramurals are.”
An array of other sports could potentially be offered in the future, including badminton, pickleball, table tennis and e-sports.
Registration for intramural sports is open via imleagues.com and if students have any further questions they can reach out via email at [email protected].