Spring fever has hit the campus at Ottawa University and one class is capitalizing on the mood. Students in Arabie Conner’s Recreation and Sports Programming class are rounding out their activity planning with the Spring Softball Slam.
The students in the class have been planning and organizing different activities throughout the semester for other students to participate in. Three point contests during intramural basketball season, soccer and tennis tournaments, ultimate Frisbee, walley ball, ping pong and dodge ball tournaments were among a few of the games that the class organized.
“I don’t believe it’s possible to learn how to plan, organize and administer programs without actually going through the process,” Arabie Conner, instructor, said. “The course is set up to gain hands on experience with every aspect of planning events while learning how to utilize resources available.”
When choosing the activities, group members try to organize something that will be fun and draw out the largest number of students from campus.
“We choose the events in class and what we all agree on and what we think the campus would enjoy the most,” Morgan White, freshman, said.
In planning events, the students had to both consider the student’s wants and needs while continuing to portray professionalism.
“As a group we just decide what would be fun,” Candace Guzman, sophomore, said. “We think of things we have done in the past, things classmates have done [recreationally] and Arabie, at the beginning of the school year, made us do some research on recreational activities and who organizes them.”
Despite the extra effort from the class, the students are seeing a lack of participation from their peers.
“We have actually had a major decrease in participation,” Guzman said. “That is a partial reason why we decided to combine our activity as a class. It feels like no one wants to do anything, yet everyone complains about the lack of stuff to do in Ottawa. If they gave some of our activities a try then they might have enjoyed themselves.”
Though small groups mostly formed the activities, the entire class influenced the Spring Softball Slam and dodge ball tournament.
“Despite the lack of participation from the OU community, our biggest event success was the dodge ball tournament. It had a great outcome,” Guzman said. “The one thing that we lacked the most was spectators.”
Once the class had people participating, the majority seemed to enjoy the games, both those participating, and hosts of the event.
“I really enjoyed the enthusiasm from the event participators,” Guzman said. “They cheered for their teammates, cheered for others, showed respect to other teams. For dodge ball, all the teams wore uniforms or some type of matching attire. It was hilarious to see them all.”
Students who came to enjoy the games got just that: a fun game to play. The focus for the class was to create fun activities among campus, and Guzman feels that a sense of fun was achieved.
“I most certainly appreciated that the teams never complained about a winner’s prize,” Guzman said. “If we had prizes they accepted them and, if we didn’t, they didn’t care. They just kept on playing. My favorite part was the dodge ball tourney and the participation.”
Conner hopes that her students will be able to apply all the experiences throughout the semester in their future careers.
“I believe that the Recreation and Sports Programming class has successfully made an impact on this campus by their hard work and by effectively helping the intramural programs here on campus,” Conner said.
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