Sign-ups available for sand volleyball, badminton, basketball and soccer

With summer term underway, students at Oregon State University have the opportunity to get involved with summer intramural sports offered by the Department of Recreational Sports.

Students interested in tournament sports can play four on four soccer, three on three basketball, and as singles or doubles badminton. Tournaments are run using elimination brackets where losing teams drop out and winners advance to playoffs against other well-performing teams.

The badminton tournaments’ sign-up deadline is July 13. Soccer comes later in the summer with registration due July 17. The basketball tournament will be the last sport of the summer, with sign-ups on August 4.

“Intramurals are just fun to play, especially in the summer when the weather is nice,” said Sam Rodenberg, the Sports Program Coordinator in the Department of Recreational Sports. “It’s more of a relaxing environment and there’s not all of the pressure of school going on and trying to make sure you get your homework done.” 

If a student would like to register a team, they can go to the Sports Program office in Dixon Recreation Center and fill out a registration form. If a student who is not enrolled in summer classes intends to participate, they can purchase a $93 extended student membership which also allows access to the recreation center throughout the summer.

“There are individual forms that they have to fill out or a team registration form and they’ll just have their team members fill out the front and back,” Rodenberg said. “They can come and submit it and we’ll get them set up with everything that they need to know with the schedule.”

According to Rodenberg, if students do not already have a team they can sign up as a free agent on the Dixon Recreation Center website.

“We have a majority of team sports during the summer,” Rodenberg said. “The only individual sport is singles badminton, so if a student is looking for a team to participate with, I’m sure others are too.”

All of the intramural sports offered are available for men’s, women’s and co-recreational divisions, according to Dixon’s Sport Programs Graduate Assistant Megan Guilfoyle.

“Some sports we have an open division which means there is no gender ratio requirement, as opposed to co-rec that requires a specific ratio of men to women,” Guilfoyle said.  “For all of our summer sports, we offer the men’s, women’s, and co-rec divisions, and our goal is to fill them all.”

Joe Schaffer, the assistant director of Sports Programs for the Department of Recreational Sports, said that they’ve seen student participation in summer intramurals largely stay the same over the past couple of years. 

“We started doing summer intramurals around 2013, the one league that has really taken off for us is the sand volleyball league. We’ve changed sports from here to there,” Schaffer said. 

According to Schaffer, the DRS will be instituting a new fee structure this fall for the payment of intramural sports, which will provide students the opportunity to participate in more intramural events and will make it less expensive for those who are frequently involved in intramural sports. The intramural pass will not be in effect this summer, but will be enacted at the start of fall term.

“We’re looking to a new fee structure with having an intramural pass similar to our Fit Pass classes here where a student can purchase a pass and get unlimited participation in intramural sports,” Schaffer said.