Intramurals at Tufts are intended to be fun and competitive, and to offer a venue to students whose athletic skills have fallen short of the varsity level.
This semester, however, many students have expressed disappointment with the intramural (IM) program.
The majority of complaints revolve around the late start to the spring season and the lack of coherent and reliable organization.
IM director Cheryl Milligan counters that a lack of student involvement and sparse student feedback about the program stands in the way of improvement.
"I don't hear many of the complaints," Milligan said. "Students should be involved in it; students want everything to be done for them, and it doesn't work that way in varsity sports. People show up and expect things to be done for them."
The spring IM program includes basketball, indoor soccer and
tennis. Indicative of the controversy surrounding the program, softball was supposed to be cut this season, but student complaints resulted in the sport being revived.
Senior David Mitchell, captain of an intramural basketball team, remarked on the softball dilemma.
"Softball wasn't even supposed to happen [this semester]," Mitchell said. "There is a lot of interest [in softball], with 10 to 20 games. And to think it wasn't going to happen unless [a student] was going to step up."
But student involvement is exactly what Milligan argues will improve the program.
"If students want to help make it better, that would be great," Milligan said.
Other participants in the program complained about the late start date of this spring's IM season, which did not begin until after spring break, leading to a shortened and rushed season.
Milligan explained, however, that the excess of indoor varsity sports presents a scheduling difficulty.
"We start later in the spring because of the indoor facilities schedule," Milligan said. "Last year I believe we started a bit earlier [on Mar. 1], and it was a scheduling nightmare with winter and spring sports using the facilities at once. It does not leave much time, and we were constantly amending the schedule due to varsity sports schedules [and] weather."
Despite the need for further student participation, student initiation can only go so far, and complaints over lack of court preparation and referees remain a problem for the IM program. Senior Andy Walker, who has played IM soccer since his freshman year, says that the program has consistently declined in his four years.
"[The IM program has] definitely gotten worse since freshman year," Walker said. "We used to be able to rely on referees showing up and the courts being ready, but this season more than once we had to get security guards to lower [baskets and] to move tennis nets."
Junior Lauren Ebstein, coordinator for the B-League Basketball program, however, is satisfied with the state of the program.
"I think that overall, intramurals have been successful and are run pretty well," Ebstein said. "I think the involvement can speak to the success of the program. There are always the little things that go wrong. The beginning of this year we had trouble finding people to ref games. We currently have at least one ref per game and the refs are almost always on time and reliable. Every program is going to have its glitches, but I think overall, over the past couple years, we have gotten the intramural system working pretty well."
Students believe that some relatively simple improvements would constitute a huge step towards a better-run IM program. One suggestion has been a clearer IM Web site, with an e-mailed schedule to every IM athlete.
"It would be easier if an automatic e-mail went out, maybe even to all the players," Walker said. "We would definitely have more
people show up. [Now] one-third to a quarter of the time the opponent doesn't show up."
Other students voiced similar claims that a clearer website and more publicity of game times would help increase student involvement.
"I signed up for intramural tennis," Mitchell said. "I never got an e-mail. Then I got an e-mail to play one week, and never again. Something as easy as cleaning up the Web site, making sign-up easier [would improve the program]."
While complaints come from both sides of the IM program, it is clear that a lack of dialogue between IM athletes and coordinators has hindered improvements from being made.
"We work very hard to try to improve IM every year and semester," Milligan said. "I am always open to a discussion that is reasonably framed about what we should do and why. We do have constraints, most especially space and weather, but the good news is that we have a large contingent of people that want to play sports."
