Wade Evans, Activities Coordinator for Competetive Sports and First-Year Experience at the Vanderbilt Recreation and Wellness Center, shares information on Intramural Sports leagues available to Vanderbilt Faculty and Staff. Play sports, build friendships, improve health, relieve stress, develop skills, and have fun playing Vanderbilt Intramural Sports.
Register for Vanderbilt Intramural Sports!
Begin Transcript
Bridgette Butler: Welcome to this edition of the Vanderbilt Health and Wellness wellcast. I'm Bridgette Butler with Health Plus. Autumn is almost upon us and that doesn't just mean back to school. For many, it also means back to sports. Vanderbilt faculty and staff have an amazing opportunity to be part of fall sports by playing intramural sports, offered by our very own Vanderbilt Recreation and Wellness Center. With us today to tell us all about intramural sports offered to faculty and staff who are members is Wade Evans, Activities Coordinator for Competitive Sports and First-Year Experience at the Rec Center. Welcome, Wade.
Wade Evans: Thank you for having me.
Bridgette Butler: Wade, what are intramural sports?
Wade Evans: What that looks like is anybody within that realm of Vanderbilt ... so, for instance, faculty and staff - they are allowed to play against each other in sports. So, it's people within the Vanderbilt family, so even VUMC, everybody. If they are an active member, they can play against other members of the Rec Center in our leagues, hosted and ran by our facility.
Bridgette Butler: Who is eligible to play intramural sports at the Rec Center?
Wade Evans: For faculty and staff, you have to have active membership to play in our leagues here. So, the great thing with that is you have the ability to pay month-to-month to play within our leagues as well. So, if you have active membership to the Rec Center, you are eligible to play within our programs. Otherwise, they would have to buy a month-to-month membership to play in the certain leagues.
Bridgette Butler: Which sports will you all be offering this fall?
Wade Evans: For faculty and staff, which also includes our grad students as well, they all play in a separate league. We have separated out our undergrad students from our faculty and staff members, which allows different competitiveness and a little different environment. So, for that, we actually offering indoor soccer, which is played indoor, not on a turf field. It is actually played on a basketball court. It is a different style offering. We have flag football, seven-on-seven flag football, and then also indoor volleyball as well.
Bridgette Butler: What are the benefits of playing intramural sports through the Rec Center?
Wade Evans: So, it's great. Actually, even just from a cost perspective, our teams are $60.00 a team to register. If you wanted to play in any of the leagues in Nashville, it's $45.00 per person to play in a league. So, just from a cost perspective, we offer something that is a little bit different than what other leagues can offer. So, what that looks like - there are specific nights that you would play in, which is great, because you know what night you are going to play. So, if you sign up for the Tuesday night volleyball league, you know every Tuesday you are going to play volleyball. The thing it offers, especially for professional staff members, it really helps with scheduling. So, one of the benefits of that, too, is to get access to our Rec Center. So, when you are playing intramurals, if you have an active membership, you are able to use our whole facility as well. When you pay for a membership or you have a membership to the Rec Center, it allows you to participate in everything. You have access to the building when you are here, so you can work out in the pool, do one of our group fitness classes, or go on one of our outdoor trips.
Bridgette Butler: And it is such a great facility.
Wade Evans: Oh, yes. It's a good thing, too. Really, and you said it, too, one of the benefits ... everything is hosted here. So, everything is on-site here at the Rec Center. That is something that is also really nice is that you know all of our games are here. When you come and play here, everything is here.
Bridgette Butler: What are some additional benefits of playing sports through the Rec Center, especially as a faculty and staff? I imagine that it can also be a fun social environment.
Wade Evans: Yes. That is actually one of the specific ... it is really why we separated out our leagues. I think it offers an environment for you to maybe meet some people in different levels of where they work at here at the University or maybe in the Medical Center or maybe just in the community. It's an opportunity to meet different people from different backgrounds and play on a team setting. Sports automatically makes you build comradery and companionship, because you don't have a choice. When you are on a team together, you have to work together for the common good, your common goal. So, when you are put on a team together, it's a way for you to experience that and kind of challenge yourself. So, that is really good for a lot of people that work here, that maybe they don't get a lot of interaction at their job. This is an opportunity to really get that.
Bridgette Butler: How do you register for intramural sports?
Wade Evans: We use IMLeagues.com and it is a scheduling software management ... it's a website. Now, there are ads and you can mute them. Every university, campus rec university, uses this for intramural sports. It allows you to manage your roster. You can pay for your team. Everybody can sign their waiver. It is a one-stop shop for all the sports. You are able to see your schedule of all your games and also look at what's coming up within the remainder of the semester and the following semester. There's two ways you can do this. One, if you already have a team and you are the captain of the team, you can go ahead and pay and sign up and then using your email, and then you will be registered into that league. So, maybe you sign up for the Monday indoor volleyball league. You know that you're in that league. Your team name will show there. You can add your roster in. So, you would go ahead and put everybody in the team on the roster, and then actually the captain will be the one that will get all the emails about scheduling updates, when games are, etc. But there are people that come here that don't have a team and maybe they just want to play and meet people and to get some experience playing sports. They actually can pay a $5.00 free agent fee on the same website and they just register as a free agent into a certain league and then we help find them a team. So, that's really good, because we are able to not turn away anybody.
Bridgette Butler: Well, that sounds like a fantastic program, intramural sports, maybe meeting new people, of course, improving health and getting exercise, maybe reducing some stress.
Wade Evans: I think the good thing about having the Grad/Fac/Staff league is that it is more like a recreational ... come and you get to experience and hang out. So, it's definitely not as, like, super, super serious, because some people just need the release. They need to get away for a minute.
Bridgette Butler: It sounds like a great opportunity for that. Thank you so much for talking with us today. I appreciate all the information that you have given us.
Wade Evans: You are very welcome. Come by my office. So, like I said, my name is Wade Evans. I am the point of contact for intramural sports, so if you have any questions about registering a team or our schedule, anything that has to do with intramural sports, please come by my office, or you can email me at wade.e.evans@vanderbilt.edu.
Bridgette Butler: Thank you, Wade.
Wade Evans: You are very welcome.
Bridgette Butler: Thanks for listening. If you have a story suggestion, please email it to us at health.wellness@vanderbilt.edu or you can use the "Contact Us" page on our website at www.vumc.org/health-wellness.
