Have you noticed balance in your recreational programming? Are some things such as group exercise classes more female dominated, while intramural sports are more male centered? Well this was the case for Sydney Westrate, assistant operations manager at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois.
“I had been working for recreation for a couple of years and was pretty diligent in collecting stats and looking at the stats,” said Westrate. “There was a core group of about 100 guys who played intramural sports. Our male to female ratio was insane. You had this core group of guys and then beyond that maybe around a 70 to 30 split of men to women who participated in our intramural program.”
Like many intramural programs, the options offered at Wheaton College were mostly traditional competitive sports, which attracted mostly men. Women tended to stick with group fitness. “I wanted to re-conceptualize it so that it wasn’t strict competition, but at the end of the day everyone was getting active and meeting a goal.”
In an effort to capture a more balanced participation in intramural sports, the Ironman Challenge was born. The challenge invites students to swim, bike and run the distances of an Ironman Triathlon over the seven-week winter term. This means a 2.4 miles swim, 112-mile bike and a 26.2-mile run.
“They can do it in any increment they want,” said Westrate. “I don’t care how many workouts it takes them or if they do it all at once. It is totally on peoples own time and they log all of their distances on the weight room bulletin board. I think what’s fun is our school is small enough that people look at the board and recognize names and they think that’s cool and they join as well.”
Students sign up at the rec center and simply have to pay a $10 programming fee to cover the cost of t-shirts for the participants. In order to market the program, Westrate uses all internal campus channels. “We put up banners in the high traffic areas and then in our gym we will send out emails and use social media. People see it up and they are curious to join. Sometimes I think marketing works and then sometimes I think you just have to start the program and let people join as it goes.”
So far the Ironman Challenge has hit the mark with engaging female students. The program has been offered for the past seven years and each time the number of female participants exceeds male participants.
Westrate hopes to add to the program in the future. “We have run an indoor triathlon from time to time and we are thinking about having it at the end of the ironman challenge. Students have done all this swimming, biking and running throughout the quarter, now why don’t they try to put it together and try a little indoor triathlon.”
