By Chris Falcone

An ongoing dispute involving intramural teams and their overall dissatisfaction with sports facilities has garnered enough attention to finally spark a change.

At a recent town meeting the issues of inadequate practice space, sparse funding for intramural teams and the teams being asked to pay for the use of the stadiums, including lighting fees, were addressed. Intramural teams are also being denied access to Shuart Stadium and the new soccer stadium.

The intramural soccer field, softball field and the rugby field are used on a daily basis to accommodate numerous sports and groups throughout the semester; therefore time and space can be hard to come by.

“We constantly get pushed to the side, from field to field,” Joanna Sieben, representative and member of the women’s intramural lacrosse team, said. “They tell the boy’s teams to tell us where to move to in order to practice.”

Sports Facilities is aware of the problem, but they say that the fields are being distributed as fairly as possible.

“Almost everyday during the spring and fall semesters, all our fields are in use because ideally that is what they’re there for,” Larry Bloom, the director of sports facilities, said. “These facilities are made available whenever possible to accommodate athletic, academic, intramural, and recreational activities. We have to update our activity schedule sometimes 40 to 50 times a month.”

The women’s intramural lacrosse team, which is a new club that was founded in November 2003, began practicing this semester. Therefore practice time is extremely important.

“We can’t go over our plays and we need to since we’re a new team just starting out,” Sieben said. “And also we’re supposed to pay a fee of $40 for lighting whenever we use the soccer stadium, yet those lights are on all the time when the stadium is not even being used.”

The issue regarding fees was addressed by Dr. Holly J. Seirup, vice president for campus life, at a recent town meeting. When hearing intramural teams were forced to pay to use campus facilities she decided a change needed to be made.

Although it is not yet a University policy, the new rule will state: “no student groups would be charged for use of on campus facilities,” Bloom said.

A member of one of the men’s intramural sports teams who wished to remain anonymous said there does no seem to be much support from the University for intramural sports.

“They basically give off the impression that they could care less about club sports and everywhere you go you run into a problem,” he said. “They hide from you because they don’t want to deal with you.”

The Student Government Association receives only $600,000 to allocate to all clubs and organizations, Sen. Bradley Smallberg said. The amount has been the same since 1982, but 20 years later there are many more clubs recognized by the University.

The Office of Sports Facilities supports the new policy and is willing to try and change the stigma that many students now associate with them.

“We want to resolve the communication problem, facilitate for the students and take care of them as best we can,” Bloom said.

He believes that the problem is in the amount of clubs and teams he has to please while being confined by limited amounts of space. He said that no teams are ever left out of the picture.

However, he said that he does not think the problem is as big as it is being made out to be by the teams and if there is any problem, all the students need to do is get on the phone and let them know.

“We try to communicate to students, realizing that there are things going on and end up playing phone tag for days, which is nobody’s fault,” Bloom said. “Eventually the call will come, it will take a few days to investigate the information and than a few more days to track down the students.”

A lot of times students are looking for an answer right away and that just isn’t possible, Combs said.

In order to use a specific field or stadium, a team must give two weeks notice. Often students will submit requests asking for use of the stadium only a few days prior.

“Too many times we can’t say yes right away, there is a procedure that we must follow, a form that must be filled out,” Combs said. “The fields, though, are available whenever there is a program that needs it. It doesn’t make sense to have facilities that nobody can use.”

Combs emphasized weather plays an important role. A day of rain or snow can set back everyone’s schedule.

For the most part though, the teams are good with giving in their practice and game schedules, Bloom said. He also adds that if there are any concerns or questions on the process, he and his staff will be more than happy to help out.

The Student Government Association also established an E-Board, in which two members from each of the 10 clubs will sit on. The board will meet every two weeks, with the goal of eventually breaking away from SGA and Student Activities in order to be able to set its own rules.

Some lacrosse members do say, however, that they have seen some improvements.