Open leagues

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I just recently took a new job with a new university. At this university, the director wants to move towards open leagues. How do you guys go about scheduling and setting those leagues up. Any advice would be great. Thank you.

Harden153,

Can you explain what you mean by "Open Leagues"? Do you mean no gender requirements or restrictions?

Jon Randle

Yes, that is correct. There are no gender requirements or restrictions.

Thanks.

We had the same situation recently with my program. We basically made our men's leagues all open leagues and we kept our women's only and co-rec leagues still. This way, if you have female, or transgender, or gender fluid students, they can play in the open league without feeling excluded. We also allow transgender students to play in whichever league they identify as. We wrote a new gender policy and we put what each league meant on our imleagues page so returning students could easily figure out which leagues they should play in.

We just changed our intramural program to all open leagues and tier the competition level into divisions. So far we are getting more new students to register for our "fun" dividion, by offering a division that is relaxed and no restrictions to roster demographics. We wrote up a gender inclusive policy and statement, with the help of our diversity and inclusion department, that has so far been well received by the student body. Our concern over gender stemmed from students in the process of transitioning at college and for those students who do not identify as either binary gender classification. We wanted to remove barriers that may keep them from participating. so far it is going well.

We have been doing this for quite a while (so long I can't remember when I made the switch). The "University" division is open to any current student, faculty or staff meeting regardless of...well anything. Most sports have two divisions - "A" and "B". Occasionally there is a "C" (basketball and flag football), and a few of the smaller sports only have one. They self select, though occasionally we will boot a team up a division if sandbagging is indicated. We also offer a women's division in all sports and a co-rec division in most. Incentive for the co-rec division is it is the only legal way to play for two teams (one in any of the other divisions and one in co-rec). The transition was fairly easy. The most noise came from fraternities because at the time the main impetus for the change was actually to eliminate the old affiliation classifications (fraternity, residence hall and independent in the then Men's division, Sorority and open in the women's) and base the structure on level of play. They got over it.

Sorry... student, faculty or staff MEMBER, not meeting!