S3 Ep.6 5 Thing You Need to Know: Team Sport Participation

Get'cha head in the game!

Daniel Chandler, UREC's Coordinator of Intramural Sports and Youth Programs, and Zach Minor, a UREC Intramural Sports Official, join Lauren to talk about the five things you need to know about team sport participation.

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Click here to view the full transcript of this episode.

Transcript

0:00-0:22

Intro: 

Hey there, welcome to Well Dukes. This podcast is brought to you by UREC Health Promotion. Tune in every other Wednesday for conversations that we hope challenge what you know, think or do in regard to your own health and wellness and helps you be well dukes.

0:22-0:42

Lauren: 

Hello, Dukes and welcome back to the Well Dukes Podcast. I am your host Lauren Shutt. And today is a very special episode because it is our first time this season that we will have two guests on. So if our guests would like to introduce themselves first we have Daniel Chandler on today.

0:42-0:48

Daniel:

Hey, everyone, my name is Daniel Chandler, and I'm the Coordinator of Intramural Sports and Youth Programs here at UREC.

0:48-0:53

Lauren:

And we also have Zach Minor on today. Zach, would you like to introduce yourself?

0:53-1:01

Zach:

I'm Zack Minor. I'm a grad student here at James Madison University, as well as an intramural sporting official at UREC.

1:01-1:22

Lauren:

It's great to have you both on today. So today, we are going to be talking about the benefits of participating in team sports. So at number one, we're gonna get started with the health benefits. So, could one of you speak a little bit to the health benefits of participating in team sports?

1:22-2:18

Zach:

Yeah, sure, I'd love to talk about the health benefits. I think they're both mental and physical health benefits through intramural sports. Just mentally, I think it's a great way to just take a load off of school and be able to just get away from the academics for a second. Being able to interact with other students is a great way to kind of distract yourself from a bad test day, or a long day of classes. Or if you had a rough day, it's a great way to kind of get out of all that funk and just be able to express yourself and get a lot of stress out. Physically, it's also a great way we love to have Dukes being motivated into motion here at UREC. And to be able to go out, be physical, get your 60 minutes of play, and be able to get a little sweat in is great for your body as well as great for your mental health as well.

2:18-4:09

Daniel:

Yeah, for sure. That's a great point, Zach. And I'll just add on to that you talked about the physical benefits as well as the emotional benefits. And I'll talk a little bit more about the physical benefits. So we talked about team sports and intramural sports in general, a lot of it is physical activity. I think that's super important for us to stay on top of because it's really easy. When we're students to get bogged down with, hey, I need classes, I need to eat, I need to study, I need to hang out with friends. But it's really important that we take some time for our physical health. And whether it's a structured environment with intramural sports and being playing on a team once a week, or just picking up and playing and going to UREC and kicking a soccer ball around growing up to UREC Turf and throwing the football around doing something like that, that physical health will help lower your stress levels. It will help with your cardiovascular endurance, help with your muscular fitness, and lower risk for obesity and cancers and things like that. We have those physical mental benefits there. Other with those other things with those mental benefits, it's going to help ignite your creativity. Because a lot of the time we're studying, we think it's healthy for us. I did this when I was a student,  think it's healthy to be in the library for four to five hours. But it actually helps us study when we take a break. And like Zack mentioned go with our 60 minutes of play. If we're studying for two, three hours, or working on a paper or studying for a test, whatever it may be, and you take a break and say hey, let's go to UREC let's play basketball for 30 minutes. Let's go play pool basketball. Let's go walk around the track, whatever it may be, let's play pickleball or climb the rock wall. Those things like that. Is that usually beneficial for our mental health as well.

4:09-4:25

Lauren:

 Thank you both for adding on to that. So at our second point, we want to kind of dig into something that a lot of people maybe don't think about as far as participating in team sport goes and that's building life skills. So DC Could you talk a little bit about that? 

4:25-9:02

Daniel:

For sure, this is something that I'm really passionate about. So we're talking about team sports and intramurals. Playing team sports is a great way to develop life skills while teaching you how to deal with like victory and defeat. Ultimately team sports provide our participants with a valuable learning environment. It helps you with a lot of essential abilities and I'll kind of go into these abilities here below. Again alot of these can play can apply to informal recreation at UREC whether it is checking out a soccer ball or basketball from the equipment center and playing around with some of your friends. As well as it can apply to more structured events that I helped coordinate with intramural sports, where teams play, let's say they're on a kickball team, they play one game a week for multiple weeks, and then go into playoffs. So again, keeping that in mind that it can apply to both. Alright, the first one I want to talk about was Teamwork. Teamwork is key in team sports to help achieve a common goal. People whether you're playing sports, or you're in classes, a lot of stuff we do is in group projects. So when you're working on a team, for team sports, or intramurals, a lot of those things that those problems that you've come up with those can translate right to your classes and your outside life. The problems that you experience, they're the solutions that you find in team sports, they can also apply to outside life as well. Sportsmanship, this one is huge, because we do have a sportsmanship rating in intramural sports. But we don't have that in other aspects of life. It's good to help teach people to be a kind of person. We know that sports are inherently emotional, and that people want to win. But we cannot allow people to get disrespectful towards our opponents, towards officials, to staff or maybe even their own teammates. So that's a big thing with us that we try to sportsmanship because you can't just go out on the field one day, and get emotional, lose, you lose your temper, and not be penalized for it. And then when you get out into life and get into a group project, when you get frustrated at somebody, you have to learn how to handle your emotions, and express them in a way that is productive with the people around you. So we try to make a correlation there with sports and your outside world. Because you're there's going to be moments where you're frustrated with people, the group member not not doing what you wanted, or there's a miscommunication there or you get frustrated with other people, but we have to if we give you an outlet to use it and intramural sports, hopefully, you can, like learn to hone those skills. When you get outside of that, that field. The next thing, this is a big thing for me, is turning a setback into a step forward. In sports, things are never always gonna go your way. Some teams may be better than you, some person may be better than you at sport activity. But you may lose a game that is totally fine. That is going to happen. Team sports allow people to learn how to deal with disappointment. Not every game goes the way you want it to. And not every player gets to be in the spotlight. Learning how to cope with these setbacks and still be part of the team is an important life skill. Okay, so we can translate that back to back to your classes back to your maybe your home life or you with roommates. You're not always gonna get 100 on the test or paper or get into the classes that you want to right away. But we have to learn how to take that setback, and learn from it and get better from. Alright, so I think sports can be a huge asset for that. Like, if you lose, you can't cry about it, you have to learn from it, get better, and prepare for the next game. You cannot. You cannot live in the past, whether it's in sports, or in life. The next thing I want to talk about is problem solving. And the more you practice problem solving, the better you become at it. This is true for any skill, but it's especially important in team sports. The more time you spend like working on strategies with your teammates, the better you get at implementing them when it matters most. We've all been in situations. Let's take in sports, for example, that things are going well in the game, whether it's intramurals or whether it's just a pickup basketball game, or a soccer game or a frisbee game, whatever it may be. You need to figure out what the problem is, adjust and plan accordingly. All right, whether that's in sports or whether it's in life, hey, if your study strategy isn't working, or your sleep schedule isn't working, you need to problem solve and say what isn't working here? What is the problem and how can I adjust moving forward? I know I've talked a lot on that subject, something that I'm really passionate about. But those are kind of some key tips that I thought of when it relates to life skills with team sports and intramural sports. 

9:02-9:22

Lauren:

Well, thank you for those coming in at number three and probably my favorite speaking of favorites. Growing up in team sports, it really gave me a sense of community and I know that we can all really speak to that but I'd love to hear Zach's thoughts on that.

9:22-13:11

Zach:

Community is definitely a big part of intramural sports and just pick up sports at UREC so it's such a close topic to me but community for me was something that I was able to build through an intramural sports and through pickup before I even came to JMU. I came on a tour and was able to look at UREC and although you're not supposed to I was able to play some pickup basketball. And I came in at probably like seven eight o'clock in the afternoon and stayed so they kicked me out at 11: 30 and I was able to meet people that hoop and meet friends that the next year when I came to JMU, would hit me up to come play basketball. And even before I was an actual student at JMU, I was already locked in with the community, which was super special to me. But through intramural sports, and through just pick up at UREC, I was able to try different sports, able to translate some skills that I've learned in high school, but also be able to just have fun and compete. There's definitely sports, not the best that have no plenty of moments playing volleyball where I’d just eat it to the face, or play basketball where I would just trip over my own feet. But just fun moments like that, where you're really just looking back and laughing at it. Because, yeah, so what I was embarrassed, but I'm out there having fun with my friends for hours at a time. And that translated to meeting kids that I had in my same class. And now if I missed a day, or would have someone to give me notes, or if I needed to go eat lunch, one day, I could hit some of the kids up and want to go eat lunch at D Hall. And so that community extended a lot further than just sports and athletics. And last year, we even got a couple of people to come play basketball at 6am in the morning. And then afterwards, we would go to D Hall and, and just grub. And just something like that is super cool to be able to translate that community that we built that we all have the same passion to play basketball enough to wake up at 6am. And do it multiple times. And then go eat and talk about sports, talk about classes, talk about life, there was that community feel that people need rides home, and one of my friends that I was able to meet at JMU found out he lives near Virginia Beach and needed a ride home one weekend and hit me up. And I was like, Yeah, sure, I'd love to go home. And now I'm able to help them out all because we share that bond of going and playing intramural sports, but also was able to kind of see through different lenses with sports as well. Like, we have wheelchair basketball offered at JMU. And I used to work with the Special Olympics organization back in my high school. And being able to play it seeing that inclusivity that you were at coffers was super cool to me, just with my background, and seeing other students that may need that wheelchair basketball event. So feel like they can fit in and want to be active but can't play five on five basketball is super cool. Or like Daniel was talking about earlier with pool basketball like being able to go into different I was gonna say habitat. So being able to go out into different spaces, and be able to just have fun doing whatever we want, I think is a super cool thing that UREC offers and insect community that we have club teams, we have D 1 teams and we just have people that want to go play pickup for fun in between classes, after classes before classes, to go be active or just to go enjoy life enjoy the offerings that JMU has, as being a grad student. I'm so thankful as UREC  is offered at JMU. Because I'm whatever semester away from not being able to have access to that facility. So as a little bit of guidance and mentorship, I'd say usually, UREC, because once you leave, there's not going to be another place like it.

13:11-13:15

Lauren:

Absolutely. Daniel, do you have anything to add on community? 

13:15-13:35

Daniel:

A little bit. I mean, Zach, you talked about I loved what you're talking about with how you were able to build a relationship with people. Do you as an intramural sport official..did you ever make that community connection or impact with participants or other staff members, as an official?

13:35-15:10

Zach:

100% as an official, it was super weird to like, kind of first, see from the other side of the table, I guess, being just a player of intramural sports for the first couple years and then picking up officiating, I was able to kind of see how it all works, but also see how there's communities within the intramural officials and being able to see that, hey, they’re students to and be able to build that community at work and have friends to go, same thing, go eat lunch together, go hang out, a bunch of officials have intramural teams together. And that was also a cool community to be able to build. But it's also cool to ref because I would ref basketball, and be able to see a bunch of my friends that would play with me. And that offered just another kind of life skill, for me at least was to be able to differentiate, hey, I know I'm best friends with you off the court and I play basketball with you every day. But like, just because you might want to call or you might think you got hit like I can't give it to you because you're my friend. I have to give it to you or not give it to you because of what I see. so that was a challenge that I really had to go through. That officiating was able to offer me but back to community. The officiating group really is a tight knit group, which is kind of cool. And we're always there for each other especially if someone so I dropped the shift to pick up a shift. And it just goes to show that there's community within intramural sports but also within the officiating group as well.

15:10-16:27

Daniel:

I yeah, I love that I do have one more thing to add with that. Thinking like big picture with the community when you come to JMU people people love it because of the vibe because the community that we have here and but it's, let's be real for a moment, it's really tough to find your place to find your people, going with team sports, whether it's in like people in your dorm or roommates to make an intramural team something as simple as like to on to Cornhole or Spikeball that we have, or a larger group where it's seven on seven flag football, it's really important that we can you can utilize your opportunities here we have opportunities through intramural sports and other team sports. recreationally that we have at UREC to find your people. Like Zach had mentioned, it's tough when you first get here, you might not get along with your teammates right away, you may not get along with everyone in your major. But through team sports, you can find that commonality that everyone has that everyone shares. And you can build a relationship through that. So that community piece right there, through team sports allows you to find quote, unquote, your people. And that's a big thing that really helped your emotional and psychological health during your time at JMU.

16:27-16:49

Lauren:

Well, thank you both for speaking to that. And I think along with that community piece and like finding your people, I think the biggest other part of intramural sports or sports and participating in team sports in general is just the fun that you derive from it. So could you both speak to the fun of team sports?

16:49-18:01

Daniel:

this is what it's all about. It's about having fun. At the end of the day, like we can, we can be competitive. We can go out and try our hardest. But we have to realize that we're not D 1 athletes, we're not on the club team, most of us. We were here to have fun to improve our physical abilities to have fun with our friends. And just overall to have a good time. This is the biggest thing here. I don't want it to get loss of people that they're so caught up in trying to win, which is great, which is just fine. Like, that's how I play too. But to enjoy the moment and have fun with people who weren't playing a game next time. Think of it when you're playing pickup basketball at UREC or next time you're throwing a Frisbee at UREC Turf for kicking a soccer ball around at the park or for playing intramurals. Think about just take a step back and think about how much fun you're having. Because this is what we always used to do as kids, playing our youth sports when you're seven, eight years old. And getting into high school, like the rec leagues, we did it because it's fun. I don't want that to be lost on people. That playing Team sports should be in can be a lot of fun. And that's what it is about at the end of the day.

18:01-20:24

Zach:

Yeah, I definitely agree with that. And I definitely am one of the guys that will get so into the game that I'm losing, I'm having a bad game, like I kind of psyched myself out. But at the same time, after every game, I have to look back and be like wow, like, Who knows when like that could have been like the last time I ever get to play. And so I really have to enjoy the games that happen. And I think with the community, being able to have fun with friends, being able to have fun with random people sometimes even if it's just pick up. But like being able to just enjoy what you're doing. Being able to enjoy being able to do stuff, I think is something that I took for granted especially with COVID I still remember having to go play pickup wearing masks, and going and playing pickup and not being able to play full court basketball and stuff like that kind of took for granted at first. So now being able to have those freedoms again. It's really I want to enjoy it. I want to love it like being able to go to like two playoff games tonight like can you imagine like doing that a couple years ago we weren't even allowed to. So I just want to kind of emphasize being able to have fun with your friends being able to have fun with your roommates being able to have fun with random people that you can build those relationships with further. Like Daniel did a great job saying that you might not like your roommates you might not like people in your hall, but intramural sports and pick up sports allows you to get a broader impact and a broader reach in the JMU community. Like I'm a biology major and I love east campus but when I go to UREC I'm with education majors, I'm with college of business people and with psych people like we all have different majors we're all have different backgrounds. When we come to play sports, it's to have fun, so a big melting pot of different people. And we all share the same goal. Oh, hey, I want to go play basketball. I'm gonna go play volleyball and play Spikeball. Like, there's things that we can have fun doing outside, like sand volleyball, which I never really thought about playing under the sun versus playing inside on the court. So I think that's always a cool thing to just be able to enjoy the nature around us, and being able to enjoy the facilities that UREC has.

20:24-20:44

Lauren:

So speaking of the facilities, something we really pride ourselves here at UREC, on and at JMU. As well as that we have a lot of different ways to play here at UREC. So could you both kind of speak to the different options that we have as far as playing team sport?

20:44-24:04

Daniel:

Yeah, Lauren, I can take that one. So first, we have a ton of opportunities, but we want people to be aware of them. So what I'm going to give to everyone now, they can take a moment to write this down or enter into their phone or laptop, whatever it may be, is going onto UREC register. So it's going to be urecregister.jmu.edu. Once you're there, then we have a ton of opportunities for a bunch of stuff that we offer at UREC. But let's focus on the team sports for now. So when you go to urecregister.jmu.edu. You can see tabs on the right hand side you can see inclusive recreation and from inclusive recreation you can see pick up and play volleyball, pick up and play disc golf at upark, pick up and play tech ball. Pickup and play basically means there is a loose structure you can show up at UREC or  UPARK and come play with anyone you don't need to pre register for anything, you can just show up with your JACard or your mobile ID and just come play and have fun with your friends or show up by yourself and make some new friends. So that's kind of the first thing on the team sports inclusive side. What I do is intramural sports. So that is also on URECregister. If you click intramural sports, it'll have you sign in to URECregister in order to take you to IMLeagues. And that's a little bit more intramural sports, it's a little bit more structured. We have officials we have you sign up to play the same time every week for your sport. And we offer things such as kickball, flag football, basketball, floor hockey, soccer, things like that. We offer it all year round. All right. And so if you go up there you can, that's when you would coordinate with your friend group and say, hey, I want to let's make a kickball team, let's play Monday nights at seven o'clock and you sign up your team for that you get scheduled and we would make the team for you. We'd make a schedule for you there. And you'd have fun for those weeks. But if you want to play that structured style, without that you don't have that friend who have to do it, they want to, they don't want to play that particular sport. But you do. You can join as a free agent. And because there's always teams looking for additional people. So what you can do, you can still make an account on IMLeagues. And look for teams in that sport that are open and willing to take free agents and you can request to join a team and make new friends that way. I've heard multiple stories of to give you an example, this semester, where someone was looking for a team they reached out they weren't having any luck, they reached out to me. And I was able to connect them with a team that was able to take them in. They've played volleyball their whole life, but like their friend group, and they were freshman year, first year here. That cohort wasn't really inevitable. But she didn't want that to let she didn't want to let that stop her. And so she reached out to me and we were able to connect her with a team to play this semester and just talked about earlier this week. And she's having a ton of fun playing with our team. So those are some things that we talked about that structured style with intramurals or informal style with Inclusive Rec. There's a bunch of different ways to play but it all starts at urecregister.jmu.edu.

24:04-25:27

Zach:

To add on to that from Daniel ways to play I kind of mentioned earlier but we do have both UPARK and UREC which are super great facilities. And like at UPARK we have the turf or you can shoot some lacrosse goals. We have soccer goals, as well as football fields, tennis courts, pickleball courts, sand volleyball, outdoor basketball, disc golf. And then of course UREC we have everything you could really imagine. But we also offer different things outside of that. Like two wheels, two scoops, which is a cool thing, which we like to Kline's and we also have local parks like Hillandale Park and Purcell Park and it's all about starting with intramural sports here and pick up and play basketball here. That creates those groups and those communities and having fun outside of JMU and the local Harrisonburg communities is super fun. But other ways to play like to think we have to pick up sports, which is super fun here at JMU as well as just intramural sports. I love cornhole and I'm super into it. But like, we have different events like pack the park where you can come out and play and go to our ropes course over at UPARK or just going to play pickup basketball at UREC.

25:27-26:08

Daniel:

Zach, I do have some for you on that. So I remember when I was a student here, let's be real for a moment. That we talk about these things, hey, we have all these opportunities we have. We have the facilities for it, we say people are gonna play, but you're a grad student now, from the perspective of a first year, a second year student maybe that this is their first year without masks and without the COVID restrictions. Coming into play basketball at UREC can be kind of intimidating. What advice would you give a first or second year student that wants to play pickup, but doesn't know where to start? Or is it just kind of intimidated with that?

26:08-27:31

Zach:

I can definitely see that. And I appreciate you bringing up that perspective. Honestly, just going out sometimes by yourself. And it was a super challenging first step. But going shooting around, hitting around if it's volleyball is definitely a great first step to go by yourself and get used to going to the facilities. Getting into that rhythm of going out and being active is a great first step because it gets you there. I know a lot of a hard problem that a lot of people have is just going to UREC, or they'll get to UREC, and they kind of get intimidated by all the people that are there, which for me was what really happened in the weight room like I want to get into lifting. But I would see how packed it is. And would get super intimidated and never go in there. So I can definitely see how intimidating it could be to go play pickleball or to play pickup basketball. So but just going there, and we have three courts go in there and just shoot around by yourself. That's a great first step, then go around with a friend, bring go play two v two maybe. And then the more people you start to kind of bring in the more comfortable you get, then you can say hey, can I play five on five with you guys? Or hey, can I get next in the rotation, stuff like that is a great little first step, if you aren't used to it, aren't ready to just kind of throw yourself in there.

27:31-27:33

Daniel:

Yeah, thanks for sharing that.

27:33-27:42

Lauren:

Thank you both so much. So that's gonna do it for us today. But I'd love to hear if either of you have any closing thoughts for our audience.

27:42-28:51

Daniel:

We talked about the health benefits with everything make, it's like, there's a lot of physical benefits and emotional and social benefits, and cognitive benefits. It can help with, with all those things outside of an outside world, whether it's class and family, in roommates and things of that nature. Playing team sports has a bunch of health benefits that we can take away from that we also talked about life skills. Again, I'm very passionate about that you can translate some of those skills that you've learned in team sports and take them into the outside world. And really utilize those skills to the best of your ability. So nothing. Last thing I want to harp on is the fun piece with it is I want to make sure we're playing team sports, it is for fun. And don't let the fear of you don't want to take that chance to go play by yourself for a little bit until you make some new friends or you're not sure what, what to expect. This is supposed to be fun. And you don't have, we only have four, five years here at most. Make the most of it and enjoy the time here. And really like say yes to those opportunities and have fun playing Team sports.

28:51-30:39

Zach:

Yeah, definitely. That was a great way to close but also want to add like or just to be kind of open and vulnerable for a second. So in high school. I lost my father during my senior year during basketball season. And it was super hard for me as everyone could imagine. But basketball was kind of my outlet. And it was my way to distract about, like everything that was going on in my life. And it was something that was able to put a smile on my face. And that was something that I carried here at JMU. And that's why I'm so passionate about basketball and playing pickup and intramurals. But it's kind of grown to be that escape for studies as well. And whether I've had a bad relationship with a friend we got into an argument and as you need to get away from it, I can go to UREC and just play and there's always people there. Or I've had two tests today and I really just like immensely exhausted and need to get away like I get to go play pickup volleyball if I want to with some friends. Or like I’m a big Cowboys fan and we always get hated on and when we lose it's just even worse. But let's say I had a bad game and my actual sporting team didn't do well. I can go make up for it and play my own sport, whether it's pickup or intramurals. And that's something that for me, it's a really big mental getaway. Because we all know school can be really taxing at times, especially when it's finals week, or midterms. And just want to say like, don't forget to go be active. Like, that's a big mental escape for me. But it also helps with my studies, because then when I'm finished, I'm ready to get back into it, compared to just studying for four or five hours straight at the library.

30:39-31:18

Lauren:

Absolutely. Well, I just yet again want to echo thank you Zach and Daniel for being on today. I really really enjoyed this conversation. And we’re always open to having these conversations outside of the podcast as well, so definitely contact us. We’ll have all of our contact information within the description for the podcast. I just want to remind everyone listening today to make sure to follow us @JMUUREC on both TikTok and Instagram. We love our social media here at UREC and it's how you can stay up to date on all things Well Dukes as well. So, just closing out, as always, be well Dukes.