We composed this letter in response to the SAINT column critical of the intramural program at Aquinas. We hope this clarifies some of the information.

* The intramural program is suspervised by a staff member who uses a student staff exclusively to man open gyms, open weight room hours, and run activites. Student officials are used approximately 99% of the time. We have brought in adult officials for finals of some sports events. We attempt to train these officials and most take sports officiating class offered by the HPE&R department. To use outside officials would be costly as most high school officials earn $65 per game with 3 man crews for basketball. The recent switch of seasons in the State (boys & girls both in winter) has created a severe shortage of certified officials.

* All of the IM information is posted on the athletics link of the Aquinas website under INTRAMURALS

* Captains’ meetings are held before each organized activity. Team captains are mandated to attend. At these meetings rules are discussed and schedules are distributed to each captain or team representative. It is the responsibility of each captain to distribute the schedules to team members. Additional schedules are available in the Fieldhouse.

*Scheduling is at times difficult due to the inadequate facilities. As the Athletics and HPE&R departments have grown over the years, open times have become more restricted. Evenings (7-11pm) and Sundays (7-midnight) have become the standard for the indoor events. Sunday is a staple of the program during the winters because it allows students to work, travel home, and still participate. We realize the AQ campus mass is on Sunday night, but there are numerous services on Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings at St. Thomas and other parishes close to campus. Friday night is the only time with no conflicts, but experiments with using this night have been futile.

We hope this clarifies some of the misinformation. We will select an advisory team to give input on some of these matters; however, the lack of facilities causes severe problems when trying to run the intramural program. Thanks for listening to both sides of the story.

Dave Hammer/Intramural Director
Dave Baldwin/Student Supervisor of IM’s
Terry Bocian/Director of Athletics