Washington State University UREC

Mission and Values

Washington State University (WSU) University Recreation (UREC) engages the community in healthy, active living. Core values: Excellence, sustainability, inclusivity, discovery and play.

Goals

To welcome and engage students as members of a safe and inclusive campus community.
To enhance quality of life for the WSU community through engagement in recreation.
To provide experiences that cultivate personal, academic and professional skills for success in higher education, the workforce and society.
To add value to the university through ethical and effective stewardship of resources.

Description of Facility(s)

Student Recreation Center (SRC)

The SRC opened in January 2001. The center offers 164,000 square feet of dedicated fitness and recreation space for WSU students and features a five-lane lap pool, leisure pool with water basketball and water volleyball, and a 53-person hot tub.
There are seven hardwood courts in the SRC: four for basketball, one for volleyball, one for badminton/pickleball and one indoor sport court with dasher board and netting for indoor soccer or roller hockey.
There are three fitness rooms including a 10,000-square-foot weight room on the first floor and four different areas for cardio and sectorized weight equipment on the second floor.
The SRC has a climbing wall that’s 32-feet-high with a bouldering cave. Also, a four-lane indoor track was built above the four basketball courts.
The SRC Backyard offers three outdoor basketball courts, four sand volleyball courts, a steel pole challenge course with three high elements and 11 low elements, a slackline course, and a backyard building with a classroom, restrooms and challenge program storage.

Chinook Student Center

The Chinook Student Center (CSC) offers 69,000 square feet of student-centered space for undergraduates. The CSC opened in February 2017. Recreation and fitness spaces include two cardio rooms, weight room, CrossFit room, three fitness classrooms, outdoor fitness turf, personal training offices, sport club athletic trainer office and two saunas.
The Esports Lounge offers 36 computers featuring Alienware Aurora R15s, Intel Core i9-13900KF processors, 32GB Dual Channel Ram and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards. The Esports Lounge also features the latest generation console gaming systems and a shoutcast booth for streaming competitive esports competitions.
The CSC also offers study, social and activity spaces. There are eight small group study rooms, two mediation rooms with foot wash stations, a nap room with multiple napping pods and reclining chairs, and two music practice rooms. The leisure game area features two pool tables, a foosball table and a chalk wall that allows students to leave encouraging messages, drawings and other creative designs. There is a large 3,000-square-foot event space for meetings, programs and events.
Freshens Fresh Food Studio offers fast, casual food made fresh, signature fresh blended smoothies and an expresso bar.

Stephenson Fitness Center

A renovated dining center in the basement of the Stephenson Resident Hall complex, the Stephenson Fitness Center (SFC) opened in August 2015. The SFC provides fitness options to residents and members on the south side of WSU’s Pullman campus.
The 7,500-square-foot area includes weightlifting and cardio equipment, two multi-purpose group fitness and training rooms, and a small lounge.

Valley Road Playfield & Grimes Playfield

These two lighted, outdoor field turf facilities opened in 2010 and provide 10 acres of year-round use, including the ability to plow snow during the winter. These facilities offer open recreation, programmed times for intramural sports and sport club practices/matches, and community rentals.

Programming

Aquatics and Safety Education

UREC has been awarded the American Red Cross top training provider for six consecutive years (2017 to 2022) providing 621 total certifications in 2022, with 44 aquatics certifications and 577 land-based certifications.
Swim the Pac-12 is a fitness challenge that encourages swimmers of all levels to participate by either water walking, aqua-jogging or swimming through any of the three routes — beginner, intermediate or advanced. The challenge runs for 12 weeks and the distances for each route have been calculated based on the general distance between each campus. Prizes are given to participants who register and log their laps.
AquaPatch is an opportunity for students and members to go for a swim and pick one of nearly 600 hundred pumpkins floating in the pool. Participants can carve and decorate pumpkins which come from a local farm.
Masters Swimming is a structured aquatics program designed to challenge all participants no matter their swimming abilities. Masters offers on-deck coaching, with workouts tailored to the group of swimmers. Each workout plan will be adapted to each individual swimmer to help push, challenge and improve each participant’s personal goals. This program is perfect for those wanting to cross train, improve swimming techniques, master skills, training for triathlons and more.

Fitness

UREC provides over 180 classes per week in 45 unique formats. WSU CrossFit is an official CrossFit, LLC affiliate. UREC hosts various unique fitness competitions such as the Palouse Throwdown (functional fitness) and Cougar Classic (powerlifting).
Host to several nationally recognized fitness certifications such as Les Mills, Pink Gloves Boxing, Barre Above and Schwinn Indoor Cycling.

Intramural Sports

Intramural sports offers extensive opportunities to currently enrolled WSU students, faculty, staff and their spouse/partners in over 60 competitive and structured activities each year. Alternate events such as Art and Craft Nights, Learn to Cook and leisure games like Settlers of Catan tournaments have been popular.
Rugged Coug Race is an approximately 5K obstacle race on the WSU campus, featuring physical elements on the course such as a wall scale, tire flips, off-road running, sandbag carries and more.

Outdoor Recreation

The Outdoor Recreation Center (ORC) offers about 100 trips and clinics annually, including backcountry skiing, avalanche education, cross-country skiing, backpacking, rock climbing, mountaineering, kayaking, standup paddleboarding, wilderness medicine courses, Thanksgiving break backpacking in the Grand Canyon, a spring break Utah National Parks tour and San Juan Islands sea kayaking in summer.
The annual outdoor leadership course, Backcountry Travel and Leadership, provides a multi-day, multi-discipline program for WSU students wanting to develop leadership skills in addition to technical skills, while providing an avenue for prospective new staff.
The ORC hosted the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour for 27 years. It typically attracts 475 attendees in a sold-out campus venue. The Outdoor Photo Contest and Exhibit, sponsored by WSU’s ORC and Student Entertainment Board, receives around 200 submissions from amateur photographers each year.
The ORC maintains extensive equipment resources to help make everything from a weekend camping trip to a multi-day kayak or ski tour a raving success. The center sees over a thousand rentals per year.
The annual Pullman Pulldown Bouldering Competition, part of the Northwest Collegiate Climbing Circuit, provides the opportunity for friendly competition for about a hundred participants across the local and regional climbing community.
WSU’s challenge program contributes to student success by hosting an environment which allows students to connect. Student groups build community, share experiences and are challenged via experiential education. Students facilitate around 85 groups per year on the Challenge Course, including 10 low elements and three high elements.

Sport Clubs

UREC has 23 sports club teams, including one varsity designation, Cougar Crew. All sports club teams are required to attend Developing a Positive Team Culture, a two-hour program designed to combat hazing and promote teamwork, communication and problem solving. Sports Clubs receive subsidized team training sessions through UREC personal trainers for in- season performance or off-season conditioning.

Fun Facts

WSU Sports Clubs have won 13 national championships, with the rodeo club winning the first of those 13 in back-to-back years in 1951 and 1952.
Intramural sports at WSU started in 1902 with a men’s track meet between the four classes. The first women’s intramural event was a tennis tournament in 1904.
WSU has hosted six regional extramural basketball tournaments and two regional extramural flag football tournaments and one regional club soccer tournament.
UREC sport slub Cougar Crew, had a book published about their first 50 years titled “Pull Hard! Finding Grit and Purpose on Cougar Crew, 1970-2020” by David Arnold.