Swinging for the Fences:

Every year the Director of Intramurals, Chris Smallwood, puts together intramural sports for everyone in the surrounding community to be a part of and enjoy. This year, Smallwood has added even more to a lineup of activities that are among the most favorable on campus. Before this school year, Concord has hosted many intramural sports, such as flag football, indoor soccer, five-on-five basketball, and volleyball, but intramurals have been such a home run over the last few years that Smallwood decided to try softball and it has been an overwhelming success. 

Smallwood, who has worked for Concord for over four years now, said when he tried to start intramural softball his first year on the campus beautiful, it didn’t work out so well. 

“When I first started intramurals we tried doing softball for our first sport and only about nine people showed up, and that was enough for just one team, and as intramurals has grown over the years and we’ve been able to gain access to the softball field, as the coach has been gracious enough to let us use the field as long as we follow her rules,” he explained.

Smallwood went on to talk about how intramurals are beneficial to students by stating that it gives the students a chance to get out of their rooms and play some of the sports they had the opportunity to play in high school. 

“It’s an environment where students can interact with each other and faculty, they can meet alumni. Even the county commissioner comes out and plays five-on-five, and we sometimes allow students from other schools. It just creates a community-type deal and all of the students get to interact with all of these other people.”

Despite all of the fun that comes with intramurals, Smallwood says that just as much work comes with it. He likened intramural basketball to an adults league, stating that CU intramural basketball has 37 teams divided into four divisions, and it often requires ten or more hours a day between that and running the fitness center and pool. 

When asked what sports Smallwood would like to add to the yearly intramural slate, he stated golf and bowling would be ones he would like to add, but noted the challenges that those sports face.

“If I could get equipment or get Pipestem to cooperate then golf would be one we could try while another sport is going on. With a school our size, it’s harder to have two sports going on at once because a lot of the people who play one sport also play another, and if we do two at the same time it could detract from both sports. Bowling would require us to travel which raises liability issues and it’s harder to have events off of campus. A lot of the student population isn’t as big as it is at other schools where you have 28,000 undergrads, but if we had some facilities that my staff and I could run it would help. We could have intramurals like racquetball or indoor tennis, and longer seasons, even tournaments throughout the year.”

For any student of Concord or any surrounding higher education school that meets the qualifications for each individual sport, check out the intramurals that Smallwood and his team have put together by emailing him at smallwood@concord.edu and find CU intramurals on Twitter by following @curecreation  and on Instagram by following @cu_intramurals, for all of your campus intramural scores and highlights.