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Diversions
Campus Rec offers variety, health, fun
By Ashwin Raman
Published:
Thursday, January 30, 2003
Media Credit: charles martin
Freshman students Meighan Sather (right) and Stephanie O�neill, workout in Eastman about 4-5 days a week. Like most students that attend Eastman, they come together to help each other focus.
The Campus Recreation center has, for years provided students with the opportunity to take a short absence from their academic life for the chance to do something along the lines of recreation and fitness. Each semester their staff members tirelessly try to come up with new and attractive programs for students as well as maintaining and improving existing programs.
This semester sees the birth of a few new programs as well as additions to the intramural sports categories. Interestingly enough, one of the new features offered this semester is a "Celebrating Fitness" contest. In this competition, students are awarded points for the number of activities and the duration spent taking part in them per week. The point system basically goes as awarding two points for every 15 minutes a participating student does of a continuous activity and one point for every 15 minutes spent doing a lower intensity activity.
Running, swimming and aerobics fall under the category of continuous activity while golf and team sports fall under the lower intensity category. The participant with the most points at the end of the semester will be awarded prizes. Chris Haukos, coordinator of fitness and special programs at the Campus Recreation, says that it's a new program that anyone can be involved in and that the main point of the contest is to get more students physically active.
Another addition to campus recreation this year is the Eastman Dance Program. This program is eight weeks long and includes lessons in jazz, funk, lyrical and ballet dancing. Denya Rockstad, who has been a dancer for 20 years, will be the instructor.
According to Haukos, a recent evaluation in the Eastman Fitness center showed that there are over 2,000 students that use the facilities. "We even have a ton of freshmen and female students...certainly more than what we had in the past," Haukos said.
In April, Eastman Center and Campus Recreation will hold one of their biggest events, the Earth Day marathon. According to Haukos the last Earth Day marathon was very well received and that there were around 1,200 participants and around 2,500 at the expo. She expects and hopes that the turnout this spring will be the same or even better.
A popular program among students for many years has been intramural sports and its coordinator, Butch Fealy, says that three new kinds of sports have been added this semester. One of them is team tennis, which is similarly based on the international Davies Cup competition format. Also new is a bowling league to be held down at the Atwood bowling alley as well as the introduction of dodgeball as an intramural event
"There is lots of participation for the hockey, basketball and soccer leagues but I'm hoping that the new sports will take off too," Fealy said.
Students are advised by both Haukos and Fealy to check out what Campus Recreation has to offer them either at the Eastman Fitness Center or at their office at 102 Halenbeck Hall.
