Director of Student Activities Morgan Calvert — with the help of student employees Quincy Barnard and Vincent Couto — is working on bringing fun competitions back to the Newman University community through a revamped intramural sports program.
Calvert explained that the program offers “a way for students to get involved and actively engages them in a fun way with various competitions.”
The competitions and tournaments include a variety of sports and activities from soccer to pingpong, capture the flag, basketball, volleyball and even video games.
The program was extremely active in the past, but there had been a bit of decline in events and programs. Barnard and Couto recalled that when they were freshmen they would see events such as mud olympics or mud volleyball along with other things to stay involved on campus.
“And everyone’s kind of wondering, ‘where’d that go,'” Calvert said. “Since I stepped in as the new director of student activities in October, it has been a goal of mine to revamp this program.”
To help bring the interest of the students to the table, Barnard and Couto were hired as student workers to help create competitions students would enjoy.
Couto explained that as a student worker, he and Barnard are “looking to implement the actual intramural, and that comes down to the events themselves. … For example, if we are doing soccer we are going to need a referee, whether it be us officiating or someone else.
“Dealing with financials … is being relayed through Morgan as well and so is the implementation of the program itself, as well as figuring out logistics and marketing.”
Barnard added, “We help by being active on campus and recruiting people to actually come to the events.”
Barnard and Couto have office hours during the week so plans can be made for programming future events for the entire spring semester. During their office hours, both are going to create the actual event ideas and perform logistical work such as reserving space for a soccer tournament. They will also help with marketing and creating graphics to get the events pushed through the student life email, as well as advertising it on campus social media handles.
Students are encouraged to share their ideas for future possible tournaments.
“We love their ideas and we want them to start engaging with this department more as well as Quincy and Vincent as the face of our intramural program for this spring of 2018,” Calvert said.
For more information, or to share ideas, contact Calvert at (316) 942-4291, ext. 2453 or [email protected].
