BY RYAN HORNE
Another year at Conestoga has begun and for many this is their first dip into the unfamiliar college pond. College newbies acrossNorth Americawill be experiencing the Freshman 15 over the next few weeks as a result of an overabundance of drinking, unhealthy eating and partying. Students at Conestoga can still live those memories without having to deal with the extra unwanted weight by signing up for intramurals.
Registration for intramurals will begin the first week of school with games slated to start during the first week of October. You can sign up either as a team or as an individual through the front desk at the recreation centre or online through the Conestoga website. People who sign up as individuals will be put together to form a team.
Sports for both the fall and winter semesters include volleyball, ball and ice hockey, soccer and dodge ball. Typically, 1,000 students sign up for intramurals across all sports each semester with hockey being the most popular.
“We’ll try dodge ball again even though we’ve had a fallout with not a lot of people wanting to play dodge ball last semester, but we’ll try to get more people interested,” said Katie McCartney, who runs the intramurals program.
Full equipment is needed for ice hockey and a helmet with a cage is mandatory for ball hockey. The recreation centre does provide rentals of caged helmets as well as a limited amount of goaltender equipment.
There will also be drop-in times for students to play basketball, badminton, soccer and volleyball in an unorganized pick-up fashion. McCartney said the drop-in times give students more flexibility and opportunities to stay active.
She said it is very difficult to add sports to the intramural program since gym and field time is restricted with varsity sports and other events.
“It all depends on availability of time,” she said. “If somebody is really interested in something like cricket and knows about the sport there’s an extramural program that has a number of different sports which play against different schools.”
Extramurals are more competitive than intramurals, but not as competitive or time-consuming as varsity sports.
They used to run ultimate Frisbee, European handball and three on three basketball, but they had to get rid of them due to lack of interest. There was also outdoor slo-pitch which was very popular among students. With one of the diamonds becoming a parking lot and the others being used for varsity fastball and rugby practice, intramural slo-pitch was the odd man out and had to be axed.
McCartney said intramurals are the perfect fit for someone who is new to the school and wants to try something different.
“It’s a great way to meet new people and you don’t even have to know a whole lot about a sport,” she said.
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