Ask Dr. Ross
"Ask Dr. Ross" answers the important and nagging questions parents and potential college students raise about higher education. Topics include preparing for college, avoiding student debt, and secrets to good grades. Hosted by award-winning professor Catherine Ross, Ph.D., and student producer Ashley Worley, listeners can ask their own questions by emailing ADRquestions@gmail.com.
Find us on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/@AskDr.RossPodcast/featured
Ask Dr. Ross
How Can I Stay Active in College? Exploring Rec Sports
We sit through classes, sit to study, sit on a couch to relax, and often sit at a desk to work. It’s easier than ever as a busy college student to miss out on the basics: sunshine, fresh air, friends, and movement. Sure, there’s the gym on campus – but what if you’ve never been before? How do you break through the intimidation? Will there even be an activity you like there?
Enter the Rec Sports team – and their director, Rick McGill.
This week, Dr. Ross and student producer Ashley Worley discuss what you might not have known rec centers have to offer with UT Tyler’s Director of Recreational Sports, Rick McGill. From free weights to ski trips, the department has something for everyone. He shares how rec sports engagement impacts the lives of students, helping them stay healthy, build friendships, and even secure unexpected career opportunities.
Whether you’re a basketball enthusiast or an air hockey champ, there’s something about sports that brings us all together. The resources you need are here – and it includes so much more than a gym.
Have more questions about rec sports opportunities? Email us at ADRquestions@gmail.com or leave a comment below. We’d love to hear from you!
Want to stay up to date on UT Tyler’s rec center? Download the app to see the gym’s live occupancy count, register for club sports teams, view upcoming outdoor adventures, and more! Search “UT Tyler Rec Sports App” and find it on Google Play or the App Store.
Stay tuned to the Ask Dr Ross podcast. It's created to give you info to succeed at college. Our hosts are highly qualified. Dr Catherine Ross is a member of the University of Texas System's Academy of Distinguished Teachers. She's also a popular professor of 19th century English literature. Ask Dr Ross is a community service of the University of Texas at Tyler.
Speaker 2:So today we're interviewing Rick McGill, who is the head of Rec Sports at UT Tyler, and we wanted to find out a little bit about this mysterious thing called Rec Sports. It's this field that a lot of folks don't realize goes on at colleges, and I think it's a wonderful endeavor. So, rick, first of all, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and how you came to UT Tyler, and then we want you to tell us everything that needs to be known about Rec Sports.
Speaker 3:Okay, that sounds great. Well, thanks for having me. So, Rick McGill, I'm originally from Iowa. I started in the recreational field really when I was in high school, coaching, refereeing youth sports, and then I worked for the City of Independence Parks and Recreation Department, so that's where I grew up, Started getting more involved in their recreational side of programming. It started as a summer job, ended up being kind of a year-round thing as I got involved with the facility and the programs. As I went to college I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my you know career and my life. So my supervisor at the time, Bob Beatty, he said, hey, you know, this is a career, something you can go into and make a living, and so really, I just took that and ran with it.
Speaker 2:That was one of the surprises for us is that there actually is this field. You think of sports as oh big time, college coaching and these million dollar contracts and stuff like that, and yet there's so much more physical activity going on at schools and colleges.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. It's maybe a lesser known realm than collegiate athletics or something like that.
Speaker 2:But it's probably much more accessible to a lot more people.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely. So there are colleges across the nation that offer some sort of recreation management degree or you know, sports management and those type of things. So I went and I got my bachelor's and my master's degree in, essentially, recreation management at the University of Northern Iowa.
Speaker 2:Now hold on a minute. Is there anything like that at UT Tyler that a student listening to this podcast might be able to pursue? That could help them lead to this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the closest thing would obviously be within the kinesiology department, and we do employ a lot of kinesiology students to get experience in our facility as well. So I would say that's the closest thing that we have right now. On a little bit of a sidebar, I am teaching an introduction to sports officiating class now. We've done it for three semesters, so it's another piece of the sports world that people can get involved in.
Speaker 2:My son helped to pay his way through private college by refereeing sports.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a great opportunity for someone to even take as a career or just a side gig right to make a little extra money, and it's something that we need officials in every sport that we have. So I worked at the University of Northern Iowa getting all kinds of experience in facility management, intramural sports, really anything I could get my hands on. I was a graduate assistant and got my master's degree From there. I accepted a position as the intramural director at Truman State University, which is in northern Missouri. So I worked there for three years, mainly in intramural sports but also helping with facility operations. And when I say facility operations, I understand people don't always understand what that means, but you know, when you go to the rec center and you hop on the treadmill and it works, that's great for you.
Speaker 2:When it doesn't work, Got to go see Rick McGill? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:And we've got to make sure that the facility is safe and clean and that we have the proper policies and that you know we're studying our hours of operation, are we serving the students correctly? And so all of those things go into what you know facility operations really is, and so keeping the facilities accessible to students and adding new things and staying up with the trends to make sure that we're offering the best things to our students.
Speaker 2:So at Truman you were making sure facilities for all sorts of intramural kinds of athletics, but also you were helping with the sports themselves, weren't you?
Speaker 3:Yes, so I would oversee all of the referees and the supervisors for the different sports that we held there, as well as, yeah, the facility side of things.
Speaker 2:So how'd you get from Truman to UT Tyler?
Speaker 3:Just looking for the next step in my career Ended up at UT Tyler Thought. Texas sounded nice and hot. I was tired of the cold in the Midwest.
Speaker 2:Well, I understand. It's really icy cold in Iowa in the wintertime, isn't it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you will not hear me complain about the 95 degree weather today, because I know what the 10 degrees feels like, so ended up taking the associate director position here. My original role was in real sports club sports marketing and really you know other duties as assigned.
Speaker 2:What exactly are the kinds of physical activities and sports that you help students?
Speaker 3:to experience. We have our major sports like football, basketball, soccer, volleyball. In most of those sports we offer like an indoor and an outdoor version. For example, for flag football we'll play seven on seven in the fall and we'll play four on four in the spring. So they're similar but different experiences, right? So the major sports we do we generally have two iterations of that and we have men's teams, women's teams and co-rec teams. It's a great experience. It's a ton of fun. We see a lot of community building in intramural sports specifically. Right, that's where you meet your lifelong friends and you know different things like that.
Speaker 2:How do students get involved in rec sports?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so there's a multitude of ways. When you come to UT Tyler, you pay your fees right on top of your tuition, and part of that is a recreational fee, and so you automatically have your membership. When you show up here, you bring your ID card to our building, you swipe in and you can go work out and do all of that. So we have, obviously, our fitness floor with selectorized equipment, cardio equipment, we have free weights, we have a walking and running track, we have two racquetball courts, an aerobics studio and then we also have what we call a dungeon. It doubles as the athletic weight room for the teams, but each night we open it to the general students. So if you want more of that free weight Olympic style lift, you can get it there. And then, obviously, we house the basketball arena as well, which is open to students outside of practicing, and the outdoor swimming pool and spa, which is open year-round. It is heated, so even in the middle of winter it's 80 degrees in that water. There are eight tennis courts that we oversee as well, so it's open for open rec each night and we do turn the lights on so you can play after dark. We have a big group of pickleballers that play as well. So we offer open recreation and pickleball. We'll set up the nets and everything for it. Anything recreational sports-related we offer open recreation pickleball. We'll set up the nets and everything for it Anything recreational sports related.
Speaker 3:We offer the equipment as well. So you come in, you sign it out and you return it when you're done with it. So, a basketball, volleyball, pickleball If you want table tennis stuff, we have that. If you want to play our air hockey table, we have those things. Foosball, you name it. Hopefully we have it, and if we we don't, we're willing to look into it. We're just trying to give as many different experiences as we can to the students. So, yes, all of that stuff is offered. You know. You sign it out and you return it. It's not like we're charging you for the equipment.
Speaker 2:Well, now I think I saw some canoes.
Speaker 3:Yes. So we have obviously Harvey Lake here on campus and we do offer canoe and kayak rentals and stand-up paddle boards as well. So one of the other pillars of Rec Sports is outdoor adventures. So every semester we take a group of students that can sign up and go on different trips throughout the region. It may be a hiking trip, a canoeing trip. We go skydiving every semester and so we offer those trips to students as well. Now, the outdoor adventure trips, the weekend trips, the smaller ones, free of charge to students. Our bigger trips, like skydiving, we offer them at a small charge. But the one trip I definitely want to touch on, our biggest trip of the year, is our ski trip to Durango, Colorado. Oh, wow, yeah. So we take usually 35 to 40 students on a charter bus and we go skiing, snowboarding. You can go snowmobiling for four days in Durango, Colorado.
Speaker 2:That's an incredible resource that I bet a lot of students don't realize. How do they find out about it? How do they get signed up?
Speaker 3:The biggest thing for us is downloading the RecSports app. So if you go into the Apple Store or Google Play, search UT Tyler RecSports and there's an app that houses everything that we do, and then our intramural sports has another app that works in conjunction with that app, called Fusion Play. So they're both run by our software company called Fusion. But that's where you'll see everything. You'll see our schedules, you'll see what fitness classes we offer, you'll see our hours of operations. We even have a live occupancy tracker on the app. So if you're sitting in your dorm and you know you really like you know the third treadmill is your treadmill you can look at live occupancy and see, well, is there 20 people in the building or is there 200 people in the building, right? And so you can really find out the good times to go for your schedule.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. Now, this is all students use during their free time. Right, these aren't courses that people have to enroll in, although, like your, reverie in class is something, but most of this is just free and open.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we're open 6 am to 11 pm during the week and then 10 to 8 on weekends. So we try to be open. You know, we know students are busy, we know that they have classes and jobs and things like that. So we try to make sure that we're available to the students. So, yes, this is drop-in recreation. When you're available and the facility's open, come on in.
Speaker 2:How do you do the sports though, Like when you have games and things? You've got to have some organization there. How does that work?
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. When you sign up for, say, flag football, you can select the days and times that work for you to play. And so then when we generate that schedule, if we know Monday nights from 6 to 9 pm you cannot play, we will schedule you on Tuesday night or Thursday night.
Speaker 2:So you schedule them.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's through the app. Our department consists of six professional staff members and one of those staff members, tyler Artley, he oversees our intramural sports, so he'll take all the registrations, put the leagues together, put out the schedules, make sure that everyone gets the same number of games and works for their schedule, and we have referees ready to go. Yeah, so it's a pretty seamless process.
Speaker 2:How many students in a semester might take part in it, like in one of these sports, like, let's say, flag football.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so flag football, I would say. Our average registration is somewhere around eight to twelve teams.
Speaker 2:Teams, wow, teams, yes, of seven each.
Speaker 3:Yeah, at least seven, because it's seven on seven for that league. So usually teams will consist of, you know, 10 players. That way if someone can't make it they can still field a full team. But you know, over the last few years our average in real participation has been, you know, recovering from COVID, obviously, when we were all shut down, but in general we'll have somewhere in the ballpark of five to six thousand participations a year of students.
Speaker 2:That's incredible. You know, earlier, a couple of seasons ago, we did an episode on what your tuition pays for and we mentioned RecSports, but I don't think I had any idea how rich a resource that is. And, oh my goodness, I mean I think about what people pay to belong to a country club or a tennis club. Right now, that's a wonderful resource for students. Club or a tennis club right now, that's a wonderful resource for students. Do you worry about students playing sports, that they're not ready to play, that they're not fit enough, or is there anything about fitness that you all monitor there?
Speaker 3:On the sports side? Not necessarily, but what we do offer is some entry level. Hey, I've never been to the gym or I don't know how to do this. Can you help us? So at any time, our staff is ready to give what we call a fitness orientation. We'll take you through the entire building, we'll show you the different machines, we'll help you with anything you need. We offer spotting all the things that you need to get involved.
Speaker 2:You do any like fitness assessment?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can sign up for a fitness orientation which will do that.
Speaker 3:If you are a beginner, we also offer classes like beginners that lift, so it's a class of people who maybe aren't comfortable lifting or don't know how to get started, and we'll have a instructor there who's going to take you through the process of getting started what you need to do, what does this machine target? And actually this semester, our assistant director, tasha Cleaver, who is a world-renowned powerlifter, is going to be teaching that class, so it's an incredible resource for our students. And we also do it in the dungeon area which I mentioned, so it's a more secluded area, right, we know one of the barriers to getting involved in fitness is I don't want to be out in the open with all the people that know what they're doing, so it's a really good place to start. The other options we offer. So we offer personal training and one of the first things you'll do is, with a certified personal trainer, you'll go through an assessment or an evaluation to kind of know where you're at, and then they'll write a plan for you and help you through that process.
Speaker 2:Is there like any waiting list to get on that, or is it?
Speaker 3:Nope, you can sign up online and we do a really good job of trying to pair you with a good fit for a trainer and make sure that you know the people that are interested in that program get what they need. And then, lastly, if you want a more self-led, you know I don't want someone telling me what to do, but I need some help to know what to do. Almost every machine in our building has a QR code on it. In our building has a QR code on it, and if you scan that QR code, it's going to play a video of hey, this is how I use this machine and this is what it targets.
Speaker 2:How about that?
Speaker 3:We want to remove any possible barrier to someone coming into our facility. Right, we want people to feel comfortable. We want them to find their passion within rec sports, whether that be in the fitness realm or the sports realm, or outdoor adventures any of that. We want to just make sure our students have the proper resources.
Speaker 2:Well, I have to interrupt for just a minute and say it sounds like you have a really fun job.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is. I'm very blessed. I love what I do. It's something that I truly, truly enjoy no-transcript.
Speaker 2:Well, talk to us a little bit about those benefits and what you've seen happen, both physically, emotionally, socially.
Speaker 3:So we know, you know, if you look at fitness or being active, like we understand most of those physical benefits right, being healthy, leading an active lifestyle, you know, helps you feel better, it helps you live longer, it does all of those things that you know your doctor's telling you you need to do and it's a great benefit. But some of the things that I see from my side that really drive what I do and make me passionate about what we do is the community and the mental side of things and feeling that sense of belonging. So I always talk about, you know, when we leave college. You know, hopefully the professors, dr Ross, don't get mad at me, but do we remember Biology 101? Or do we remember when we won the flag football championship our junior year? You know it's those lifelong memories and building of community and the people that you're going to stay connected with after college.
Speaker 3:And one thing that students don't always realize but when you get involved in college, whether it be sports or it be fitness or outdoor adventures, and you find that passion, those things are lifelong passions and lifelong benefits that we know are helpful. And so every year we do a survey at the end of the year for all of the students and the ones that you know have participated in our programs consistently talk about how it's one of the reasons I chose UT Tyler. It's one of the reasons I stayed at UT Tyler. It's one of the things that you know has changed my life, because now I understand how much better I feel when I go to the gym three times a week, or now I'm playing softball in the summers in my hometown because I loved it so much at UT Tyler or whatever it may be. So we know sense of community, the sense of belonging. The lifelong friendships and memories that they make also have that lifestyle change built into them as well.
Speaker 2:You know so many students that come here. They were involved in sports in high school, not enough to be on the teams, but they were used to that kind of athletics. And if they come here and all they do is study and sit in the library and it's not good, it's just not good and mentally, physically, emotionally. It's much better for them to keep going and I'm so thrilled to hear about this.
Speaker 2:You know, I have a colleague at UT Austin who is a runner. He invites students every year in his organic chemistry class to choose one sport to work on all semester and to report to him about it, and I think he gives some sort of reward. Maybe they have fewer questions on their exam or something, I don't know. But he has moved on from that to actually teaching courses in the science of happiness and one of the things that he encountered in that study of happiness was the degree to which our physical activity just getting out and walking and breathing air, if not playing athletically and hard and competing is going to contribute to your happiness. I bet you've seen that all the time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:And one thing that you mentioned that I haven't talked about for a pillar of rec sports is you talked about the athlete who may have played in high school but isn't playing at the Division II collegiate level Actually have something for them, and so it's called club sports.
Speaker 3:It's really a step above intramural sports. So within intramural sports you play other UT Tyler students, right, and you kind of just show up and play the games, probably not doing a whole lot of practicing or training, right. It's more of a fun atmosphere. But if you're looking for a good mix with maybe a little more competitiveness to it, we offer a club sport program where you and whoever else is involved in that club can practice here on campus, can go through our department to help with resources, and they can travel regionally or even nationally to compete against other schools. So we have several active clubs here. We even have bass fishing and power lifting, which are successful, volleyball, basketball, and if we don't offer a club that you're interested in, it's very, very easy to start a club here at UT Tyler and our department will help you with that process.
Speaker 2:Well, I think this has just been a really interesting. Ashley, do you have some questions?
Speaker 4:for him. I mean you pretty much covered everything very thoroughly. We appreciate you coming in and I know you talked a lot about these passions that students can find when they come into college can stay their passion for life. Have you personally seen any stories of students who graduated and seeing how making use of the rec sports opportunities they had in college affected their life afterward?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. So. There are two students that come to mind immediately and that is Brandon and Jonna. I'll shout them out. So both of them worked in rec sports. So, side note, we employ a ton of students every semester.
Speaker 3:Almost everything that we do within our department is student run, right? The people working at the desk, cleaning the equipment, refereeing the intramural sports are all UT Tyler students. Same thing with teaching fitness classes. So if anyone has those passions, there's ways to get involved. You know, make a little bit of money and have a job here on campus with flexible scheduling.
Speaker 3:But Brandon and Jonna both worked within our department. They're not recreation majors, that's not their degree, because you know UT Tyler doesn't have a specific recreation degree. But they worked within our department for multiple years in different positions, right? Whether it was working at the front desk, being a building manager, working in our office selling memberships or being an outdoor ventures intern, things like that. They got a ton of experience and both of them, after they left college, didn't go into the field that their degree was in. They both went into recreational sports. And so Brandon's still in Texas working in the recreational field and Jonna's actually in Iowa. She moved north after college working at a university up there. So I've mentioned to you guys before that when I see students develop that passion and, you know, wanting to not only be involved in rec sports but even work in rec sports is is awesome to see yeah, I think that it's important for students, first of all, just to know about this amazing set of resources.
Speaker 2:Now, you did say something about selling memberships. What are you talking about there?
Speaker 3:so our building is open to faculty staff as well, and so we sell memberships to them, and then the community can actually be a member to the facility as well. And so we sell memberships to them, and then the community can actually be a member to the facility as well.
Speaker 3:But the membership already belongs to the students yes, already belongs to the students, and we limit the amount of community memberships we sell during the school year because we want to make sure that the students have space right, but during the summer, another pillar of Rec Sports is youth programming. So we run youth summer camps, we run swim lessons. Now, our students are the camp counselors, are the lifeguards, so it's a great experience for them. But what it allows us to do as a department is make revenue off the facility when the students are gone to then pour back into the facility for the students when they come back.
Speaker 2:I think that that's such an important thing for everyone to remember is that there's so many different things you can do while you're in college that become part of a resume, part of the things that shape your ideas about what you want to do post-college. It also is really important, I think, for having people like you who have kind of learned how to do it, sharing your knowledge and your enthusiasm.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the other aspect of being involved and working within RecSports or really anywhere is the connections you make along the way. So, for example, in our building, you know you have students coming in, so you're meeting students. You have faculty and staff coming in, so you're meeting them. You have community members that come in. You know it may be your professor or a vice president at the university that's coming in and swiping their ID every day and you develop that relationship and it really can open some doors for you right.
Speaker 2:You know, one thing I'm embarrassed to say is I didn't know that much about what you all do, and I would encourage you to find ways to let more faculty know, Because I think you know I figure my job as an English professor is not just to teach English, it's to teach humans and to help them have as complete an experience in college as possible, and I'm already thinking about ways I can send them off to rec sports. Now Look out McGill.
Speaker 3:Yes, we want them all. It's one of the many struggles I think we have is just trying to market everything that we have and make sure they know what the opportunities are. Our building generally will have 180,000 entries every year, and that's not including people playing intramural sports or going out to our adventures. That's just people swiping in to work out, and so if you think about the amount of traffic, you know that's great, but we also know that we're not getting to every student and so we want to really focus on the students that we're not getting to. That's why we try some unusual programming like drone racing, or maybe it's a air hockey tournament instead of basketball. Sometimes when people see rec sports or they think of the workout area, it may not be their passion, but we want to make sure they know there's other things that we do that we can also offer.
Speaker 2:Well, this has really been eye-opening for me and very exciting for me too, because as I get ready to start teaching my classes this fall, I always try to talk to my students about making sure they have a full experience, and I now have another arrow in my quiver.
Speaker 3:We would love to see them all and, as always, you know, like I mentioned, the app is really where we put a lot of information. But, yeah, stop by and see us.
Speaker 2:Rick, this is so cool. I'm so glad you came to UT Tyler from freezing Iowa.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you very much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, all righty. Well, I guess that's about everything we need to know for the time being. We'll hopefully be seeing you out there in the field somewhere in the school year. Thank you so much for coming in. Thank you.
Speaker 4:And if anybody has any questions for Mr McGill or the RecSports team, you can leave a comment under our YouTube channel or you can send us an email at adrquestions at gmailcom. Thank you.
