Intramurals Offer Exercise and Community to Students

Kyle Rotante '26 prepares for the play as his partner serves in their tennis intramural game on Oct. 6. Photo by Cora Flynn '26

Upbeat music fills the air with the pop of tennis balls and sneakers squeaking, as Marist College students participate in intramurals on Oct. 6. This crisp fall night is one of many where students have fun and stay active by playing a variety of school-sponsored sports.

On this particular night, the intramural staff was running pickleball and tennis. As the students arrived, the staff gave them the necessary equipment and instructions on where to play. 

“I always loved the competitive, but fun atmosphere that people can get into it, but they're also non-serious at the same time,” Caitlin Camilleri ‘25 said. “Also, it gives me a chance to play sports that I wouldn't be playing otherwise.”

After signing up on IMLeagues, any student can form a team or join as a free agent to participate before the deadline. This fall session, Marist offered pickleball, tennis, soccer and flag football. This winter, Marist is offering volleyball, basketball and badminton. Each team has a game around once a week. 

“It's just as much as you want it to be. It's a minimum of one game per week for an hour. It's at most, you participate in five leagues, and you’ve got five games during the week,” said Stephen D'Alessandro, assistant athletics director for intramural sports, club sports and camps.

Intramurals are popular with students looking for a more relaxed opportunity to participate in sports. 

“In high school, I was always under a lot of stress because I felt like I had to play really good, but now everything's kind of dialed down a little bit, and I can kind of relax and just have fun when I'm out there,” Drew McCauley ‘26 said.

Sports like pickleball and cornhole only require two players, while sports like flag football and soccer need at least seven members. Students sometimes have trouble finding enough people to form a big team, which can motivate them to try other smaller sports.

“Freshman year, it was hard to find enough people to make an intramural soccer team. So that's what got me to do cornhole and volleyball and other sports, which is fun because it was something different that I hadn't done before,” Camilleri said.

After his first year in his role, D'Alessandro is working to address the lack of organization within intramurals, which caused problems for students previously. Confusion around rules and expectations of the sports have created disappointing experiences.

“My one negative experience was volleyball last semester, where they weren't very clear with the rules. They didn't tell us beforehand how many club volleyball people could be on your team, and then they told us on the day of playoffs, ‘Oh, you can't have this many club volleyball people on your team, so you're disqualified,’” Ryann Lambert ‘26 said. 

This semester, D’Alessandro has increased the training of the staff, created a more fluid schedule for games and added a required meeting about rules and expectations for one member of every intramural team. The increased organization is paying off.

“In the past, we've had to cut teams off because of the way that they did scheduling. We haven't had to cut any team out this year. We're up 150 participants from last semester,” D’Alessandro said. “So what we're trying to do is working, and we're seeing more people that are interested in participating.” 

These changes also aim to make the programs more accessible to students. 

“We've tried to start incorporating some single-day events during the activity hour on Wednesday and trying to sprinkle in a weekend activity every month,” D’Alessandro said. “We're just really focusing on extending offerings, figuring out how we can expand our leagues to be more inclusive for students and give them more opportunities to participate.”

With more changes to come, the program aims to help students follow and expand their interests in sports by providing exciting opportunities. Students like Lambert, Camilleri and McCauley praise the positive experiences they’ve had with intramurals. 

“Even if you've never played a sport and you're interested in [it], I would say, just do it. I never played volleyball until last year, but all my friends were on a team, and they were like, ‘You should join us, it’ll be fun.’ 100%, try it out,” McCauley said.