Intramural sports provide a way for students to relieve some stress from their college lifestyle. Intramurals are generally part of recreational leagues that allows internal college teams to play each other in various sports.
Intramural sports were first created by a man named Elmer Mitchell, who founded this recreation league at the University of Michigan in 1913. The intramural program was first established at Stevenson University in 2011.
Intramural sports include two separate seasons per semester. For the first half of the fall semester, students can choose from three different sports in which to participate. These sports are flag football, beach volleyball, and kickball. For the second half of the fall semester, which starts in the middle of October, students can choose to play in indoor volleyball and indoor soccer.
The spring semester is also divided the same way. The sports that are offered are basketball, floor hockey, softball, and outdoor soccer, but the time in which they start has yet to be determined. Other league sports might be added to the spring season or may be removed, as everything can be changed with time.
Any current student, staff, or faculty can sign up at imleagues.com/stevenson. There are no tryouts. When students sign up for an intramural sport, they can make their own teams if they have the right number of players. Those who want to sign up by themselves will become “free agents” and can be picked up by any team that needs an extra player.
Once a team is created, it must have the minimum number of players needed to compete in order to play.
The recreational league will host two games per night, and each team will have a chance to play one game per week. Games are generally held outdoors with the exception of a few sports, and the outdoor sports are played primarily on the grass fields (now called the “Lawn”) on the Owings Mills campus next to the Dell Family Pathway. Indoor sports will be held in both the Greenspring gym as well as the Owings Mills gym.
At the end of the season, similar to NCAA competition, playoffs are held, including rankings for sportsmanship. A championship game will net the winners an intramural championship t-shirt as a prize.
Intramural players compete with only their peers in the Stevenson University community. This is a way for students who don’t want to play at the committed NCAA level to compete with friends and relieve some stress, while still being competitive.
