Log rolling events are the perfect opportunity for your intramural and aquatics teams to collaborate, to engage new users in the pool and activate a new space for intramural activities. Putting on log rolling challenge activities and competition is uncomplicated for your staff and fun for your students — even if they have little or no prior experience.
Log rolling competitions don’t need to be elaborate to be super fun. Start by offering friendly, informal weekly/monthly ‘roleos’ targeted to your students as an intramural sport. Friendly competition helps everyone build their skills. You can also offer skill challenges as the competitive focus. UNC Charlotte holds monthly log rolling challenges where students compete to stay on a log the longest and prizes are awarded. In April they held their first intramural log rolling tournament.
If you see success with your students, reach out to nearby campuses to see if there’s interest in planning a regional tournament. Last fall, three universities put on regional tournaments. Many of the students who participated were very new to log rolling so they offered a format to give ample rolling opportunities so they could improve throughout the event.
- One hour prior to the tournament, they held a competition clinic: an opportunity for all rollers to get pointers and practice.
- The tournament began with a co-ed round robin bracket with two out of three fall matches.
- Results from the round robin matches were used to seed the competitors in a single elimination bracket with three out of five fall matches. The results from the single elimination final were used for awards in the men, women and co-ed staff categories.
Everyone’s skills improved significantly because of the frequency of their rolling and the variety of competitors and skill levels. They were able to apply ‘lessons learned’ quickly to their next match.
To make the tournament experience fun and unique, you can invite campus acapella groups to sing the national anthem; campus comedy improv groups can provide color commentary to the announcing; you can trained intramural officials to officiate the matches; and telecommunication majors can produce a news clip about the tourney. Incorporating other campus groups into the event has the added benefit of introducing more people to your log rolling program. They may not know much about log rolling initially, but their knowledge will grow throughout the event and add energy.
Start log rolling competitions on your campus to excite and prepare your students for the inaugural Collegiate Log Rolling National Championships (Spring 2019, location TBA) and continuing this fall, the Regional Collegiate Tournament Series (locations/dates TBA).
By Key Log Rolling. For more information, visit keylogrolling.com.
