Department of Intramural-Recreational Sports 2016-17 Annual Report
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- Navigate this page:
- Intramural Sports Awards
- IM Extravaganza- Cardinal Game Night
- Marketing and Promotions
- Learfield Sports Properties
- Document releases to all media outlets weekly
- Perform quarterly facility inspections for the SRC and HSC Fitness Center
- Continue web statistics study
- Perform the installation of critical updates and virus protection installations
- Continue to evaluate needs for SRC instructor staff
- Document attendance numbers of all group X classes.
- Determine types of classes to offer
- Assess officials in all sports
Officials This year we continued our trend of having many new and inexperienced officials for most of our sports. The students that came out to be officials this year spoke volumes about the quality of students that are on campus as they were all very intelligent and quick to learn even though officiating is not easy. Most of the officials that we had this year were freshman so the Intramural Department is very optimistic about our officiating crews in the future. If any of these students return to officiating again next year then we will have a very strong core of officials to build off of. We reworked some of our official’s trainings to try and accelerate the learning process for our new officials. We also made some of our trainings more intensive in order to make the officiating better for those sports. Championship Nights The Intramural Sports Department has made it a point to create exciting events when possible for not only the participants but the spectators as well on “Championship Night”. This year we continued our tradition of holding our Basketball Championship in Cardinal Arena at the SAC. The participants love the opportunity to play in a Division 1 arena for their championship nights. We held the Flag Football Championships on the Intramural Field and made an effort to make it a bigger spectacle than in years past. Both were well-attended by spectators and had a feel of something bigger than just an Intramural championship. Not everyone can say they played in a major Division I sports venue like the students who participated in the Swim Meet, Track Meet, and our Tennis tournaments. Thanks to a great working relationship with the Department of Athletics our participants continue to benefit from these opportunities. Intramural Sports Awards This year was our 30th edition of the annual Intramural Sports Awards. This year’s Awards Banquet saw another large turnout at the George J. Howe Red Barn. We continued the tradition of giving out official’s awards in honor of Dale Orem, Frank Nuxoll, Alfred Smith, Tony Crush, Chris Brawner, and James Breeding. We also gave out the Rusty Michalski Award for the third straight year. As is the tradition for this event various students and organizations were recognized for their achievements throughout the school year. This year the awards were heavily discussed among the intramural staff to ensure the top candidate would receive each award. Ellis J. Mendelsohn “Mendy” Awards Female Emily Stewart- Kappa Delta Male Brett Riedinger Sports Club Sean Prendergast- Rugby Club
Outstanding Male Chair Award Alex Patterson – Sigma Alpha Epsilon Outstanding Female Chair Award Alyssa Farley – Chi Omega Outstanding Sport Club Lacrosse Club Group Fitness Instructor of the Year Emily Hanson Rusty Michalski Honor Award John Deis Dale Orem Flag Football Official of the Year Dakota Graue Frank Nuxoll Volleyball Official of the Year Michael Clark Alfred Smith Basketball Official of the Year John Hower Tony Crush Soccer Official of the Year Oscar Rodriquez Chris Brawner Rookie Official of the Year Sam Gertig James Breeding Official of the Year Jeremy Mercer Most Improved Fraternity Phi Kappa Tau Most Improved Women’s Closed Pi Beta Phi Most Improved Campus Points Phi Delta Theta IM Service Awards Jeff Rushton Stanley Hall Intramural Council The Intramural Council gave us some valuable feedback during the town hall meetings that we held with them. The Intramural Council continues to be a valuable asset for the Intramural department as they give us a direct opportunity to talk to each organization individually. The council members continue to have an increased workload with the use of IMLeagues and REC*IT. They know that they are responsible for making sure that everyone in their organization is on their on-line roster by the deadline. This year we continued to use the Intramural Council to keep our program fresh. We will be relying on them even more next year when we start our partnership with Special Olympics Kentucky. IM Extravaganza- Cardinal Game Night This year we re-worked our IM Extravaganza event again. We moved the event to the Wednesday night of Welcome Week and ran it in conjunction with SAB. In the past we had run this event on the Sunday of Welcome Week and geared it towards the incoming freshman with a few structured events and info tables for our department and clubs. This year we still had the info tables for our department and clubs, but we decided to have more structured activities this year. The events that we ran were very similar to the events that would be seen at most of the All-Star game festivities in professional sports. We had a 3-point contest, Knockout, Wiffleball Home Run Derby, Hot Shot Basketball Shootout, QB Accuracy sponsored by UPS, Bubbleball, and a Fitness Obstacle Course. The night was a major success and the format will continue to be updated every year to continue to make it a success. Recommendations Continue to develop partnerships with outside corporations to provide the best experience possible for the participants of the program. Continue to strengthen its new relationship with Special Olympics Kentucky. Continue to investigate ways to recruit and retain sport officials. The Department should keep adjusting its marketing techniques to match the needs of a very tech savvy generation. Continue to adjust the Intramural schedule to keep it fresh and keep the student body engaged and interested in the program. Continue to push the mobile application for IMLeagues, REC*IT, to increase communication between the department and the students. Marketing and Promotions Marketing was a major focus of our program this year. We completed 38 specific projects identified on our annual master plan. Our overall goal was to greatly expand our level of interaction with our student population, mainly through the increased use of social media as well as enhanced visual promotion. Last year we released a then record 5,823 pieces of information through these platforms. This year we released 6,308. They featured not only things like important dates coming up, classes, etc. but real time promotional releases from events while they were taking place. We hired a student with a strong social media background to increase the number of releases we sent out during the peak evening times. The entire staff has been a part of this emphasis and it has now become a part of our culture. The quality of our printed and designed materials was much better than it has been in the past and we increased our number of visual displays by a good number over previous years. This year we completed 38 different marketing projects. The projects included every program area and featured many instances of “cross promotion” that included more than one program area. They ranged from tabling to social media to printed material to digital material. We are continually moving our marketing efforts to include many different platforms in an effort to reach the highest portion of our total community as possible. In addition to the visual and social media efforts, we made a number of personal, promotional appearances to groups like the board of directors of the Alumni Association, SOS staffers, RA and RDs and a host of other organizations. Facebook took down our existing page, which had 1,600 “friends” because it was a personal account and not a business account. When we launched the page there were no business accounts. Because of that we have had to start over in promoting the page and gaining followers. We are up to 180 now and anticipate a big jump this summer with 12 Orientation sessions where we will be promoting the page aggressively. One of our major goals was to become much more active not only in social media, but specifically Twitter. We received some feedback from various student groups that they more readily identified us as “the SRC” rather than intramurals so we changed our main Twitter account name to @ulsrc. We also launched a specific HSC Fitness Center account. Last year we had 1,400 followers. We now have a total of 3630 in all accounts combined. An increase of 126%. We also made it a point to release information every day on events that would be taking place as well as to send out promotional “tweets” during activities to generate interest. All of our program areas have access to the account so we are able to get out information very consistently. It was great to have from an intramural standpoint as schedule changes and weather conditions could be sent out very easily and actively “re-tweeted” by different organizations. We were also very active in the fitness area, promoting classes at both the SRC and the HSC Fitness center every day. Engagement is someone taking some sort of action on your tweet such as liking it or re-tweeting it. Impressions are the total number of people who see your tweets as a result of others re-tweets. Last year we averaged over 53,000 impressions per month. This year we have averaged over 115,000. The increase, of 116%, comes largely from daily polls in intramural sports and the posting of champions pictures and short video clips. Professional advertising agencies report that the average rate of engagement for a tweet is 0.1%. We average between 0.9% and 2.3% in our different accounts which is far above the national professional advertising rate, but many of our tweets are in the 15 to 25 % range which shows tremendous engagement. REACH Television As part of our overall marketing emphasis, we made much more effective use of our REACH digital monitor system. Because of a ransomware virus attack that deleted a number of our documentation files, we cannot ascertain the number of changes we made this year but we were very active in the utilization of the platform. Every roster due date, change in hours of operation, special fitness class as well as messages from our corporate partners were on the system, which goes out to 16 of our 42 monitors throughout the SRC. In addition we have posted several videos on the system that promote different program areas. The HSC facility managers did a great job of using the REACH screen at the HSC Fitness Center which has been very well received. It has the perfect location, at the end of the ramp leading into the building. The staff there has been very good at learning and using the system on a regular basis. Summer Orientation We have been part of a variety of formats during our involvement with Orientation. We began by dragging a portable basketball goal to the lunchtime cookouts to allow students to shoot and try to win one of our champion shirts before there even was an info fair. Other departments saw what we were doing and started showing up at the lunch and the info fair was born. We were part of that for years then moved to a meeting in the Red Barn in the afternoons to another info fair with just us, our clubs and the Greeks to another new format last year. We are now one of the optional breakout sessions in the afternoon. This have been by far the best scenario for us. We present for 20 minutes, twice a day. We usually have around 100 students in our sessions. The value of getting a captive audience with them for that amount of time is golden. We have developed a good powerpoint to show during our presentations and always are able to speak to a significant number of new students. In addition, we have been much more active at Transfer Orientation. We speak to that group in one of their breakout sessions and it usually has around 50 people attend those sessions. Web Page Our new design has eliminated some redundancy in our previous site and is much easier to navigate. We are making good use of it in every program area. With the re-design, we now have the Student Affairs event calendar running on one of our scrolls which is great not only for us, but helps cross-promote events through other unit sites. Our page continues to be one of the cornerstones of our overall marketing program. We were very aggressive in changing pages and keeping fresh information up. We have learned through our involvement with Orientation how important the web page is to incoming students as many of them come to our table already familiar with our program. Our numbers listed below put us in a very successful category of web use. Our duration and pages per session numbers are particularly impressive and higher than national averages. Having over 30,000 unique users is very strong for us considering the number of students at the University. That number tells us that many potential new students are looking at our web page in their information searches. Intramural Website Statistics: Pageviews – 117,026 Duration – 1:33 Page per session – 2.39 Unique Users – 30,046 (up 8,092) Bounce Rate – 57.79% (good per industry standards) Learfield Sports Properties We have seen a few others begin to use our model of partnering with a professional marketing company, but we will always be one of the pioneers in this model nationwide. Learfield is very connected to the Atlantic Coast Conference and is a national player in terms of sports marketing. Marketing, in the context we are talking about here, is about corporate relationships and financial gains for the department and not promotional ventures. Partnerships with corporate entities come with a high level of expectations from a compliance standpoint. It is crucial for us in our ability to retain current partners and attract new ones, that we complete all of our obligations in a timely manner. This entails a consistent effort and awareness from our entire staff. Last year we did not fail to complete any of our obligations to any of our partners. John Smith has regular meetings with the Learfield representative responsible for our program to insure both our compliance and to investigate potential corporate partners. We have had regular meetings with Learfield over the year and continually discuss possible new clients and ways to expand our sponsorship program. Learfield is going through a local leadership change with the top two people both taking positions with other companies meaning it will be critical for us to establish a good relationship with those people once they are known. Memberships Alumni Memberships We continue to work with the Registrars’ Office in promoting the program to every graduate of the university. This year we were able to distribute almost 5,000 pieces of information to current graduates through a printed information sheet placed in the diploma package. We are starting to see an increase in the number of students who paid the recreation fee prior to the opening of the new SRC who are eligible to receive 6 months of membership (free) for every semester they paid the fee prior to opening. We want to make sure and include that information on the materials we are able to distribute through the Registrars’ Office. We hope to retain a high number of those former students as alumni members when their free period of membership is completed. We changed our format from having membership periods of 3,6,9 and 12 months to allowing people to join for any number of months as they wanted. That has been very popular especially with new graduates as they may not know how long they will remain in the Louisville area. The increase in short term memberships been at least part of the success of our increased number of alumni transactions as we increased 30% from 554 transactions to 725 in the alumni program alone. The main factor that drives memberships is parking. The lack of parking, and more importantly free parking, for alumni anywhere near the center will always be a determining factor in how successful the program might be. The opening of a 24 hour fitness center in the nearby Cardinal Station shopping area has also had an effect on our membership as they have free parking and membership rates of $10 per month. We know of a number of alumni and faculty staff former members of ours who now use that facility. Dependent ID Validations This program continues to be popular and appreciated by students, faculty and staff. In a period of time when cost of living raises are small, benefits cost more and more, and general inflation eats up more of everyone’s discretionary income, a real value like this is a very strong public relations tool for our department. We have had a strong response from families at the Health Science Campus Fitness Center and have more intentionally marketed the program to families on that campus. We released information through the UofL Today email feature at the start of each semester. As with other membership programs, our rates for dependent IDs have changed to reflect the student recreation fee. Summer ID Validations The summer validation program allows students to use intramural facilities over the summer if they were enrolled in the spring or can show proof of registration for the upcoming fall semester. This is very popular with our students as so many of them live in the Louisville area. In addition to being a good revenue stream to us, it is a good value and appreciated service to those students. To be consistent with other membership programs, the fee matches the student recreation fee. We do not think anyone should be gaining access to the SRC for less than the students are paying so all membership fees are based off of that amount. Assessment For the year we completed 31 assessment projects that were included on our annual master plan. Assessment continues to be a driving force in our decision making process in every program area. Document releases to all media outlets weekly We keep a log documenting all of our releases through twitter, facebook, digital monitors, printed materials, Vibrations, UL Today, web pages, videos and appearances. This can be used to show our comprehensive approach to keeping our community informed about programs, events and facilities. This year we had over 6,308 information releases of some type, an increase of 485 over 2015-16. This resulted mainly in increased use of the REACH system and the OCM calendar. Perform quarterly facility inspections for the SRC and HSC Fitness Center Because of the newness of our equipment and the sheer number of pieces we are dealing with now, we are making our inspections quarterly rather than monthly. Monthly inspections will still go on, only the type of equipment will change. For example, one month all cardio equipment will be inspected. The next month all the free weight and then the following month all the selectorized equipment. We feel that this schedule will still insure the safety and proper upkeep of the equipment, but will allow us to do more in depth inspections this way rather than try to complete every piece every month. The strength and fitness staff will complete the inspections on their equipment. The spreadsheets used to check every piece of equipment is too large to format to show and example of here. There are on file with John Smith should they need to be verified. Inspections have been completed and are on file. The SRC is in the process of completing one now to catch up with their normal reporting cycle. Because of the size of the HSC, inspections are completed monthly at that location. Continue web statistics study We are now utilizing Google Analytics to track hits, page visits and duration of visits. A pageview is a record of the individual pages someone visited while in our total site. Those records will help us shape the look, feel and function of our page in the future. Our pageviews, duration and pages viewed per visit are all very strong and above national averages. Our number of unique users is very high when you consider the student population of our campus. Pageviews – 117,026 Duration – 1:33 Page per session – 2.39 Unique Users – 30,046 (up 8,092) Bounce Rate – 57.79% (good per industry standards) Perform the installation of critical updates and virus protection installations We changed our machines to do updates automatically which means we no longer maintain a record of the updates. Previously, when updates were released we would manually come around to each machine in the office to complete the updates. Having them done automatically is safer for the department as it protects the machines during the time that our staff would have been coming around to perform the updates. We lost one machine to the ransomware virus that struck over 200 machines at the University but that was un-preventable as there was no virus protection available for that particular attack. Continue Global Viewer We are having issues with Global Viewer. With the above mentioned ransomware attack, we lost the machine the program was housed on. Ironically the machine was in the process of being backed up so we also lost the external hard drive that also contained the required log in information. The system still works but we are not able to get into it because of the lack of a specific URL that is required. We are going through IT and Simplex Grinnell to try to recover that so we can again utilize the program. Fortunately for us, we were on our biggest schedule of the year when it happened so the TV’s are on longer than needed and are not impacting their use in the building. Continue to evaluate needs for SRC instructor staff Keeping our classes current and making sure we are knowledgeable about new fitness trends will require us to continually evaluate the need both for numbers of instructors but also types of instructors. The new class format of being free and not fee based, will no doubt have ramifications in our ability to stay current with the fitness industry. This is done on a continual basis and numerous changes have already been made for the 2017-2018 year. Document attendance numbers of all group X classes. We will need to document the attendance/popularity of the classes. With the personal training program staring it’s second year, we will want to be able to document the number of sessions and number of people taking advantage of the program. Attendance will help drive our efforts at knowing what types of instructors we need to be recruiting. The spreadsheets showing all information is included in the report section of this document. Determine types of classes to offer The information gathered in the attendance numbers will help guide us in determining the types of classes to offer in the future. That information will be helpful but not the only factor used as it will not take into account emerging trends in popular fitness class types. Changes for future classes based on these tools are being implemented for the upcoming year now. The fitness staff is continually monitoring trends in the group X arena and are always looking to insure our programs are reflective of those. Assess officials in all sports We want to continue the process of evaluating our officials both for our benefit and theirs. It will help us with training and thus improve the level of officiating for the participants as well as help individual officials improve to the point where they may be able to get some of the community work we have access to. The intramural staff observed and assessed officials in every sport. Instruction was given during breaks in play to individual officials and crews. Assessments were used to make assignments for tournament play at the conclusion of regular season contests. Directory: intramurals -> about-us intramurals -> Monday, April 20th through Saturday May 2nd Registration Deadline: Monday, April 13th at 5pm the game about-us -> Department of Intramural-Recreational Sports 2014-15 Annual Report about-us -> Annual Report Table of Contents Download 462.08 Kb. Share with your friends:
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