CONNECT WITH VP HECHT - All Things Sports With Campus Recreation AMY HECHT: Welcome to this edition of Connect with VP Hecht. Your guide to everything student life at Florida State. Today we continue our series on campus Rec talking about sports. So I have two special guest, Isaac Estrada, coordinator of IM sports, and Kailyn Spitzer, chair of the Sport Club Executive Council and our equestrian club president. So tell me, what are sports when we talk about that and Campus Rec? ISAAC: So we offer lots of different sports. We have IM Sports and sport clubs now IM Sports and sport clubs are separate in the sense of I think the level of competition might be the best way to kind of separate them. Sport clubs are specific clubs that have the same sport in mind. So Kailyn is equestrian, members of her club are all equestrian people. So they don't have anybody there who wants to play flag football. They're all horse oriented people. But they compete against other universities at other schools and represent Florida State University in that sense, whereas intramural sports are actually sports here on campus that go against your peers on campus. So, we can have class together, you know, anatomy, whatever it may be. And then I'm meeting her at flag football later that night. It's just part of the game. But in real sports offers different levels. There is competitive levels of recreational levels. There's just for fun levels. And we offer a ton of different sports. Just like we have 40 different sports. And in roles that we offer, we have about 40 plus sport clubs. Yeah, it's up to 50 like it's growing every year. So it's really just kind of what level competition you would like. And we have something for everybody if you're really competitive, you know, come talk to me. And if you're really into horses, talk to people. AMY HECHT: All right? KAILYN: Yeah. We have a lot of, different sport clubs, so we just, brought in about six new sport clubs this year. So now we're up to 50, which is the second most in the state. UF has 53 and we have 50. So we have every different sport from equestrian to more traditional sports baseball, soccer, hockey, even to more like niche sports. We have fencing and cuong nhu and all these different sports that I had never heard of until I got to FSU. And it's been really cool to learn about all of them. AMY HECHT: So tell me to get on equestrian. Do you have to in any of the club sports? Are there auditions or tryouts? How competitive is it? KAILYN: Yeah. So each of our different clubs kind of has a different tryout process. Some of them you practice with the team beforehand. For us actually is equestrian. We're very large club because we have three teams. And each one of those teams has a competitive and a noncompetitive. And that's actually echoed in a lot of our sport clubs where there is a noncompetitive option or a practice squad and so you can kind of dial up or dial down your involvement. So if you are super committed, you want to pay the dues, you want to practice, you want to compete, you want to travel. There's there's teams for that. And there is a team to find your home with if you just want to practice, want to stay fit. There's also options for that in a lot of them. So, for us, we have tryouts in the fall. Some sports are spring sports, so they might have their tryouts closer to when their season starts. It really depends on the best way to do that. To get involved is just to talk to the people that you want to play with. Okay. AMY HECHT: So IM sports intramural sports. How do you get involved? Do you have to be in another student organization and what games sports do we have in? I am. ISAAC: Yeah. So IM Sports you don't have to be in any specific organization. Okay. We get teams that are just high school friends that, you know, ended up at the same university. You get teams that are from the dorms. We yeah, we do get some Greek life organizations who they have their new members, come and participate or they have some of their older members participate. There really is no given requirement for me to play with. Okay. Even if you're just looking to make friends, we do offer a free agent system, which just means you're looking to play with people. You request to join teams, you can just kind of be out in the open and people can reach out to you. There's always people who need teams, and you want to play their game. Yeah. And so the free system is great if you're just looking to go out on any given night and play, or if you just have some people that you meet, you know, during that first week on school, at your time at university, you can play with them, okay. There's no real restriction on who you play with. AMY HECHT: Now, how frequently do intramural games happen. AMY HECHT: So AMY HECHT: and what sports okay. ISAAC: So we do a lot. in the fall is typically our busiest month. Okay. We offer all of our sports in the fall from the range of Sunday to Thursday. Okay. We try to avoid Saturdays because we know that we're not going to beat out Doak Campbell Stadium. Yeah. But we offer all sorts of sports. We try to line them up with what people are used to playing in high school in the fall, falls football season. So flag football and indoor volleyball are two major sports that we offer in the fall. And then we have all sorts of little tournaments such as like cornhole, Spikeball, sand volleyball, 4v4 sand volleyball, 2v2. Really, anything you can think of, we probably offer it okay. Come spring time. Again, aligning with high school stuff. We have 5v5 basketball. We have 9v9 soccer, We have softball, We have kickball, we have more sand volleyball. We offer as many different sports as we can each semester. We have five major sports that we consider, and that's football, volleyball, softball, soccer and basketball. We offer versions of those each semester, no matter what. Okay, so it's really just how much you want to play any given sport. AMY HECHT: Now, what if students don't have cars? How and where are these games and practices? ISAAC: So we try to do as much as we can on campus. All of our basketball. We utilize Tully Gym really well. So you can go in historic gym. A lot of our outdoor sports we do utilize out at the Rec Sportsplex. It's about a seven minute drive from campus. That is the one thing that it is a giant 108-acre facility that was built just for tournaments and sport clubs and intramurals. So we're constantly out there. ISAAC: That is the one barrier that we do have that we are trying to always find solutions for, on how can we get people out there for their games. But other than that, everything happens pretty much on campus. Either the main campus fields, some people call them the old iron fields. Not quite that anymore, but we always take everyone who wants to call it that. And then Tully Gym. We utilize the leach, we utilize the pool. My personal and honestly a fan favorite Intramural sport is battleship. Have you ever AMY HECHT: I've heard of this, but describe it for those that have not. ISAAC: So battleship is for me for these big canoes things for our friends over at outdoors. ISAAC: We bring them over to the pool, and then we put people in the pool in the in the boats. And then, to put it, like, nicely. You're trying to drown your friends. You have buckets of water, you have water guns and just constantly putting water into their boat, and whoever sinks first loses. And then it's kind of like last team standing. And we do it in a heat system. So, you'll play against four different teams for different teams, for four teams, and you just kind of advance on until there's one big group of 4 or 5 boats just constantly like drowning each other. Again, the nice that's a AMY HECHT: nice as nice as possible. Yeah. Yeah of course with a lifeguard. ISAAC: So ISAAC: With with so many lifeguards. ISAAC: we ISAAC: I have staff in the water. We have like eight lifeguards all ready to jump in super safe, super, super, super safe. AMY HECHT: But you're getting wet. ISAAC: You're getting soaked. AMY HECHT: you're going in the water ISAAC: Splash Mountain, it's worse. AMY HECHT: okay. Now Kailyn. Horses I know we don't have them on campus. We don't have. Where does the equestrian club ride. KAILYN: So it's not in the basement of Doak Campbell which I have been asked. Oh, they're like, where do you keep the horses? There's no basement. So we actually have three different facilities. The coaches are kind enough to partner with us. They allow us to use their horses, to use their facilities, to use their equipment. And if you know anything about horses, it's that it's really expensive. And so these people are very kind to let us, participate. And so we have three different facilities. We practice out at Little Pond Farm for our hunt team, Triangle Ranch for our western team and our dressage team practices over at Iron Star Equestrian. So all those facilities are around 30 minutes away from campus. And so it is a bit of a it is a bit of a hike. Horses, they require a lot of space. And so but our, our girls are really good about getting rides. Some of them are coming from out of state, and we had some girls from new Jersey, they didn't want to bring a car on campus. And so the girls have been really good about carpooling and all that. But for other sport clubs, a lot of them practice right here. So a lot of them practice at Tully on campus. Fields at the Sportsplex is a huge place for a lot of them. Our rugby team, our soccer teams, all those, they do a lot of games and practices there. And even the Leach is also utilized by our boxing club and by our fencing club and all kinds of stuff. And so basically any area on campus that could be used for any kind of sporting activity, it's probably being used by a sport club at some point. Our, our sport club members are very They're very determined. And they, they love to practice together and all that they are. AMY HECHT: And I know they they compete. Yes. They compete against the University of Florida and others. Miami. Yeah. KAILYN: Big ones. Yep. we normally have about five different clubs traveling on any given weekend. But yeah, our our clubs are traveling pretty consistently throughout the year. It's great. AMY HECHT: Yeah. Expensive but great. KAILYN: Expensive but great. Yeah. we are lucky enough to be funded by SGA. And so, a lot of that money gets put towards travel expenses to make things more accessible. So for a lot of these sports, equestrian included, it's extremely expensive to do it outside of college. Yep. And so when we're in university and we have that support from SGA, we try to kind of make it a little bit less expensive, a little bit more accessible so that people can maybe try a sport they haven't tried before or get more involved in travel, in a sport they haven't gotten to travel with before. AMY HECHT: Is there a competition like a finale of our intramurals? Is there a champion? ISAAC: every sport that we offer, we offer them in kind of three different formats. So we'll do a our traditional major sport format is a four week regular season. And then we go into playoffs. We offer a two week mini season. So two weeks regular season, playoffs. That tends to about three and a half weeks in total. And then we have our tournaments one days max, two days tournament. So different levels of commitment for what you want to do. And we offer, you know, student officials, it's your peers on campus reffing your games. So you're just constantly seeing your friends on campus. It's pretty cool. AMY HECHT: How many students total would you say do intramural sports a year? ISAAC: IM Sports in a given year? In a given year, intramural sports, we'll see about 11,000 unique people. ISAAC: Wow. ISAAC: just one time, they show up 11,000 people, which is about a third. Almost a third of our campus likes to come out to emails, which is awesome. AMY HECHT: That's great. ISAAC: everybody. Throughout the year, we get up to around like 20,000 participations, which just means people keep coming ISAAC: back. Yeah. ISAAC: which we love to see. It's awesome. That's that's exactly what we want from ISAAC: it means. AMY HECHT: That means they had a good time. Did it? Yeah. ISAAC: They like winning. Or maybe they enjoy losing with their friends and everybody has a different things, you know? AMY HECHT: So what about students that don't want to do intramurals or club sports, but they just on a Tuesday want to go play basketball with their floor residence hall friends? Is that something that they can do and have organized sports like that? ISAAC: Yeah, absolutely. So you can you go to the Leach Center. We do have two basketball courts that are typically open for recreational play. I know we have some staff up there to help make sure that people are not staying on the court after they lose their game, so they help get whoever's next. If you want to be more outside, you're more than welcome to come to the main campus fields, where we have, four giant quads that are just constantly going on with something. I know this semester there's been a huge crowd playing pickup soccer. It'll be like 20, be 20. And then the goal is the size of three feet long. But they're just out there making friends and having fun with each other. Main Campus Fields is a really big hub, I think, in terms of non organized sports. So outside of intramurals, but we have we have balls. We have equipment that can be checked out both here at the Leach and out of the main campus fields. and the Leach offers everything that we can think of with basketball. I think everyone's probably do volleyball. There's table tennis up there. And, our club KAILYN: We have a club table tennis team that also practices college. ISAAC: Now it's it's at U. Anywhere you go campus rec, you're going to see some clubs or somebody doing some sport. AMY HECHT: So pick up game even if you don't you don't want to commit 2 or 3 weeks. You can just show up to main campus fields, see soccer, join. ISAAC: In, hop in, ISAAC: play. We do have some goals out there ISAAC: bigger goals than the three foot ones. If you go out to any of our lake days or you, you show up to the lakefront at any point, we have sand volleyball courts out there that people participate in. There's a disc golf, ISAAC: course, nine holes. Really nice, pretty decently for skill level. It is friendly to beginners, but if you're if you're more into disc golf, there's some decent competition there. KAILYN: our sailing and our rowing club also practices out at the lake. So if you get there at 4 a.m., you'll probably be lucky enough to see our rowers out there. AMY HECHT: I probably won't be there for a while. I think I'm very committed. KAILYN: I'm very impressed by them. ISAAC: I won't either. KAILYN: AMY HECHT: Yeah, good to know somebody out there doing doing the Lord's work. KAILYN: Someone's there. AMY HECHT: So if somebody is watching and they are so interested in what you're talking about, they want to join intramurals, they want to join a club sport or see everything we have to offer. What should they do? KAILYN: Yeah. So the best way to do that is to go to the campus recreation website. All of our club sports have like little pages. You can go in, look at their information. So for example, my club, we have general body unmounted meetings here at FSU just to kind of get everybody in one room, disseminate the information and kind of send everybody on their way. So on our page, if you were interested, there would be all the information on how to join us. And so every club kind of has something similar. It will be their practice schedule, maybe where they practice, whether it's Tully or the Rec Sportsplex, about seven minutes away from campus. All that information. And so for the club sports, it'll all be on that page. You go to campus recreation sports, and then it's like the second tab down is for clubs. ISAAC: Both of us do a lot of our work actually early in the semester. So both have representation at the involvement fair. Animal sports has representation at the part time job fair. A lot of our things occur early in the semester, at least, getting started, intramural wise. And so it's really easy. We know that people who are new to campus might not know where to go. So we try to put ourselves in front of people as much as possible. Sport Club has their own recruitment night typically the second KAILYN: Fall and. ISAAC: Spring semester, ISAAC: fall and spring. And it's just a chance for you to go out and just see what it's about before you really commit to anything, because we know that sports can be a commitment, and we want to make it as accessible to everybody that we ISAAC: can. AMY HECHT: That's great. And various levels of commitment. So you can be on a club team. You could just be in intramurals. Sounds like you have longer shorter or you can just pick up. ISAAC: Or you just show up and play. ISAAC: Yeah. KAILYN: To show up and play. Yeah. For equestrian it's actually pretty unique. So, our, our sport is really inaccessible. You have to buy a horse basically to be part of it. So for the one in university, we actually have a special division for people who have never ridden before. So for less than six months of continuous instruction, there's a specific division just for you. AMY HECHT: So, so folks that never always, you know, wanted to ride a horse. There you go. KAILYN: Perfect time to get involved. You don't have to buy a horse. You have to buy the equipment, show up, get involved. It's a really good time. And you get to meet some of your best friends doing it. AMY HECHT: So all right, so some confessions. I know you both love campus recreation, so we want to hear an appropriate. Remember I'm the vice present of Student Affairs, an appropriate club confession. What's a funny story about getting ready for a game? Or one of your trips, or some behind the scenes on intramurals that you can think of, that you're going to look back as an alum and say, I cannot believe this happened. KAILYN: Oh, okay. I have two. AMY HECHT: Other than joke has a basement, which I have never heard before. KAILYN: I've gotten a lot of questions. This is where do they keep renegade? Which I don't know either. AMY HECHT: I know, but but how about underneath Doak. KAILYN: It's not underneath. And then also, one of our teams had a competition about 0.9 miles away from my house. So we got to go to my, house, and we had a bonfire. We made s'mores, like, all that kind of stuff, so it was really cool. I got. AMY HECHT: Like, your home, home, my home. KAILYN: Home. Yeah. So I got to, like. It was a really cool, marriage of, like, my FSU life and my, like, home life. I got to go to guys. AMY HECHT: Probably cool for your family to see. Yeah. You spent so much time on. KAILYN: Yeah. And my mom is a professional writer trainer. She's been doing horses for years and years and years. I grew up in this world, and so that was also super fun for her to see, like the collegiate side of things. AMY HECHT: Absolutely. Really unique. Yeah, absolutely. All right. That's an amazing story. ISAAC: So I'm actually not connected to Florida State other than from my job. I did my schooling at a different university. And but this is true of both. I have a lot of supervisors, student supervisors that work underneath me. So we have a lot of conflicting personalities. My favorite probably memory from this university. This school is, So we do all of our sports out at Rec Sportsplex. We do have some policies out there just to make sure that we can consistently use rec sports bikes. We had a team last year. I cannot for the life of me remember their name, but in the spring, they would show up to their games with a ISAAC: Blackstone grill. Oh, ISAAC: Which is not allowed. ISAAC: No, we don't want to set the place on fire. But they would tailgate, you know, responsibly, you know. Right. AMY HECHT: Nothing inappropriate. Yeah. They want the pre-game. ISAAC: Yeah, burgers and stuff. And they were for their soccer game. And my staff are aware that that is not allowed just because of safety concerns. But they're very much like but it's cool. AMY HECHT: Yeah. ISAAC: And so I get calls and they go, hey, they're tailgating. Can you please ask them to remove the grill? But it's cool ISAAC: Hey so we talked about this like ISAAC: as the cool factor does not apply. That's just a hazard. Right. And they go to the parking lot. Just get it off the grass right. AMY HECHT: Yeah. ISAAC: Really go I don't I don't really mind, but that's probably my favorite memory. AMY HECHT: From the school. I love that they make it a whole thing. Yeah. ISAAC: No you know really get into it. They had a guy. AMY HECHT: It's a real commitment. ISAAC: Like have to have. AMY HECHT: You got to respect. ISAAC: It. You do have to respect the effort. And so that's why I you know, we moved. AMY HECHT: It moved it to the gravel. Yeah. ISAAC: Go to the parking lot on the concrete where something won't catch on fire unintentionally. It happened I, I'm sure. AMY HECHT: I'm sure, yeah. ISAAC: sure, I'm sure they did with this first to. AMY HECHT: What's your sport, Isaac? My sport? Yeah. When you love. What's the thing that you would have joined if you were at Florida State? Oh, yeah, I. ISAAC: Was at first day and I would have participated. Soccer. Soccer. Really popular here. Yeah. Also flag football, I am, I am a little bit and partial of like, the ball, but I think soccer is a really popular sport here. And so you get all sorts of levels. I like competitive person by nature. I think it just comes with the job. AMY HECHT: Yep. Probably comes with being in campus rec. KAILYN: Yeah. Sports in general. ISAAC: You ISAAC: know, grow up in sports. Want to continue with it kept going. So I think soccer just how competitive here I was looking honestly, just to have some fun softball. Softball is one of our most chill offerings. Whether you're doing the tournament version of it or you're playing the the four week version, every single time you just show up with your friends, hit a ball, go crazy. We don't it's not like the softball collegiate softball. You see, with fast pitch, it's a it's a slower pitch, more adult oriented of kind of having fun with your friends. And so softball is I was looking just to have fun. AMY HECHT: we are now here for the Ask Amy and students right in when they find out what our topics are. We already addressed this, but if they want to play an internal sport and they have no one to make a team who do they go? Where do they sign up? Is there an, website that they could go to and say, I want to be a free agent? ISAAC: Yeah, absolutely. They can go to our Rec Connect. That is the website offered through Campus Rec. Through there. It'll take them to a website called IMLeagues. It's just has its own little intro portion. IMLeagues is where we do all of our team sign ups. It's where you can see what sports are coming up. It's where you can contact our office directly so that we can try to help you out. But that's also where you would sign up as a free agent so that you can request to join teams or see who might need teams. There is a tab under each team that says whether or not they're looking for free agents. Now disclaimer sometimes teams forget to turn that off. So, you know, you might reach out and you're like, oh, sorry, we don't. But it never hurts just to send a message like, hey, can I join your team? I know even playing as a student elsewhere, we get offers and we're like, hey, actually, we do need people. If you could come out tonight and they're like, I'll ISAAC: I'll be there. AMY HECHT: Yeah, somebody may have an exam. You never know, right? ISAAC: You know, ISAAC: life happens. We totally understand that. We don't we don't ever want to not have a game occur. We want games to happen. So whoever can join your team. Yeah. Bring them on by. As long as they're Florida State student. AMY HECHT: Yes. All right. Well, thank you. That is it for this edition of Connect with VP Hecht. Your guide to everything student life at Florida State University. Hope you'll follow us to get more information.