For students who no longer wish to play sports at the collegiate level but still have a love for fun activity and want to keep that going, recreational sports are for them.
At Cabrini, students are offered the option to join and participate in intramural, club sports and outdoor recreation.
One thing that has been noticed, why is there a lack of women involvement in comparison to the men?
Orlin Jespersen, assistant director of athletics and recreation, said, “Yes. I do think that there is a chance for us to get more women involved.”
Jespersen noted that the cheerleading and dance teams are the two main clubs that have the most women participation. Both are the most stable clubs among women students and are active year in and year out.
In previous years there was a women’s basketball club team. The club had a lot of success. They played in and won a statewide tournament. The team played other women’s club teams from surrounding colleges on the east side of the state. Currently, the women’s basketball club is not active.
“I would absolutely love to see some more women’s programs or be open to doing some more women specific leagues,” Jespersen said. “[There] just hasn’t been enough interest to do women dedicated leagues.”
On the contrary, there have been more women participating in the outdoor recreation programs. The outdoor recreation program includes hiking, paddle boarding, kayaking, rock climbing and trips to Sky Zone.
“Typically I have seen more women involved in those programs then in intramurals,” Jespersen said. “I am not sure why but I would love to do whatever we could to get more women involved in all of the programs.”
Jespersen has had help in promoting and running the recreation programs from intramural league student manager, Amber Dietrich.
Dietrich said, “I think that the women’s involvement is higher within some activities more than others. It all depends on who is going to participate in the event and who is not.”
Dietrich added that she feels that the program is slowly progressing with more participation among women. It comes down to those who are involved within the programs to send out a positive message to others to encourage them to join.
“The lack of involvement is mostly due to the idea of people not branching out of their comfort zone or not reaching out to their friends of friends to participate within the program,” Dietrich said.
The recreation programs goal is to first get people involved in leagues with one day tournaments that last about two hours, are fun and do not require that much athletic ability.
From that point if there is enough interest the recreation program is more than welcome to start new clubs and begin intramural leagues and activities.
There are various events that are upcoming and occurring every week for students both female and male to participate in. Every Monday night at 9 p.m. there is open gym volleyball at the Dixon center. Every Wednesday there is a trip to Sky Zone where you can also rock climb.
There will be a handball tournament on Nov. 5 and a 3 vs. 3 basketball tournament on Dec. 2.
“The purpose of the intramural league and recreation is to get people involved with something fun that they and their friends can get involved with,” Dietrich said. “Please join us for our upcoming events that we have for the rest of the semester, as well as our events in the spring.”
