The Future of Intramurals: The switch from Campus Church to Campus Worship is taking students to new heights
By Josh MEUnch

The intramurals department recently began using a software program that has helped eliminate scheduling problems. The Total Sports Scheduling System, published by Galactix Software, aids users by providing users with a system that handles the scheduling of tournaments, regular seasons, and playoffs. The intramurals department has experienced great success in using this tool for this basketball season and is currently using it to schedule the school-wide ping pong tournament. As a result of this program, the time spent scheduling an intramural sport like basketball has been cut from fifteen 15 hours to less than one. Josh Miles, head of major sports for the intramurals program, believes this will be advantageous for the staff and the participants of the intramurals program. "This program allow[s] us to start taking energy away from the scheduling part and start putting it into the small details of the program that will make it great," Miles said.

During the intramural basketball season, these small details will make life easier for the players, officials, and staff. For example, the program allows staff to view the officials of each game are displayed along with the team rosters. Because officials may run into scheduling conflicts and switch games with another official, this program shows who actually officiated the game when the game score is reported. Previo-usly, all those these changes had to be taken care of manually, which inevitably led to mistakes and miscommunication. Anot-her benefit to officials is the ability of staff to highlight players on certain teams that received a technical recently or have been disqualified for the next game. Officials are now aware of what is going on in the league instead of operating in the dark.

For participants, the program means quicker and more accurate standings. At any time, schedules or results can be printed instantaneously. It also allows staff to view contact persons for each floor so that there is good communication between staff and players about changes or problems. Furthermore, in instances like the basketball playoffs or the ping pong tournament, it eliminates any complaints about bias in scheduling. No player can suggest that the objective computer program is giving a certain floor an easier road to the championship.

Perhaps one of the greatest benefits of the technology is its ability to cater scheduling to a specific floor's request. In the future, the program hopes to be able to grant one scheduling conflict per wing. Before the season, Floor A could request that they not play late on Tuesdays. The software will then make a note of the conflict and schedule around that time slot. Hopefully, this will limit the amount of forfeits that occur when teams fail to have enough players to play.

So far, the department has encountered very few problems with the software, however,. Occasionally, the software will schedule teams to play games on three consecutive nights. The staff usually tries to avoid making a team play that frequently. As a result, once the problem is seen, it is easily rectified by the staff. Overall, the software has helped the department tremendously in getting organized and bringing a positive experience to the intramurals program for everyone involved. Miles says that there are new capabilities to the program that are being continually discovered. This just makes the future brighter for an intramurals program that hopes to generate enjoyable competition and experiences for its participants, officials and staff.

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