Editor’s note: Emerson Fitness Center was contacted about this story but did not respond and/or declined to comment

Update: On Monday, Dec. 15, the Emerson Fitness Center announced on an Instagram story they are hiring intramural sports assistants for the spring 2026 semester.

While the jury may still be out on whether or not Emerson College is truly a sports school or not, one thing is certain: students care deeply about the intramural sports program. In theory, the program seems to exist. It’s mentioned throughout the orientation process for incoming students, advertised on Emerson’s Athletics and Fitness website, and promoted on the Emerson Fitness Center’s Instagram page. Yet, this semester, the program, which routinely brought in close to 100 students per event, abruptly stopped all operations with no notice.

“It’s a great shame because of how passionate students are about the program,” said Thomas Poodiack, a recent Emerson graduate who worked for the fitness and recreation department primarily to operate intramural sports.

Poodiack, an avid soccer fan and now professional soccer coach for the USA Olympic development program, arrived at Emerson in the fall of 2022 to a different, and less expansive intramural landscape.

“There was a soccer tournament that was a one-day event, and it was a single elimination tournament,” Poodiack said. “If you managed to lose in the first round during your 10-minute game, then that was your intramural experience for an entire semester, and you’d have to wait four to six months to play again.”

Starting in 1933, Emerson offered volleyball for female students only, but over the years, it grew to include basketball, futsal, kickball, and dodgeball, and all undergraduate students who weren’t on any of Emerson’s sports teams. 

The process to participate was rather simple. All an interested student had to do was sign the fitness center waiver form and complete a Google Form found on their Instagram to express their interest in participating at an event, although, most of the time, students showed up and were permitted to play without doing so.

“I love playing basketball and the fact we have 3-on-3 games was something I looked forward to each week,” said senior business of creative enterprises major Hugo Anoh. “I always play pickup [basketball] back home and there’s not a huge basketball community here, so to have that outlet is so valuable.”

The volleyball games were unique, as students from other universities came to Emerson and played alongside them according to Kyndle Fuller, a junior writing, literature and publishing major.

“Suffolk [University] had people that came every single week and we still, to this day, go over to their gym to play with them,” Fuller said. 

Fuller noted how the intramural sports program brought students who were interested in learning how to play a new sport together, and facilitated the process of forming new friendships with students she might not have ever met outside of the program.

“The community building aspect of that is amazing to me because it shows how collaborative students can be for something we all deeply care about,” Fuller said.

Similarly, Suffolk has also phased out its intramural sports program without providing much information. The postings on their website are largely outdated, as they only include information for the 2011-2012 academic year, and a note that the program wouldn’t operate during the fall 2020 semester on another page.

Now, at the end of this semester, there has not been a single update from Emerson on the state of intramural sports, or if there is any plan for its return in the spring semester. The Emerson Fitness Center did not respond to The Beacon’s several requests for comment. 

“It’s such an easy fix to put on the website, or even send out a schoolwide email about the situation,” Fuller said. “There’s no need to keep everyone in the dark about everything, especially the students who go to [intramural sports] frequently.”

“It’s a bit disappointing given all the resources Emerson has,” Anoh said. “[Intramural sports are] very beneficial as a physical outlet for students to get a workout in, but especially mentally to get people out of their room to do something and take their mind off of school work.”

A handful of students, including Fuller, reached out to administrators in mid-October expressing interest in starting the volleyball intramural again. They went as far as to offer to take on the operations of it themselves. 

“In the end, it wasn’t really effective because they weren’t really responsive,” Fuller said. “They told us we could go through the process of booking an open gym, but it would have to be a one-off thing.”

Despite the group’s best efforts, they ultimately were never able to get their own version of intramural volleyball to run.

“The whole process was just very discouraging in the end,” Fuller said.

Throughout the exchange Fuller had with administration, Emerson revealed that a staffing issue was responsible for lack of intramural sports and few students available to help with the operations of the program.

Poodiack said that the administration in the fitness and recreation department was aware of his graduation last semester, and had started looking into hiring multiple people to work for the intramural program.

“There should have been multiple people at this point who I had helped train last semester to show them what they needed to do to fill my role once I left,” Poodiack said. 

Before the start of the semester, Emerson rolled out a massive staff layoff starting Aug. 1, cutting 30 total staff members. Over the summer, Fitness and Recreation Coordinator Will Baldwin, who previously helped manage intramurals, reportedly stopped working at Emerson in July. Baldwin declined an interview with The Beacon.

If the loss was due to not having a staff member to help run the program, Poodiack emphasized his disappointment.

“I think it’s a crying shame and a loss for the community,” Poodiack said. “All of the structures have been set in place so that any staff member working for the gym should be able to pick it up, or at the very least figure it out after a small trial and error.”

Poodiack added that the hardest part of the process—establishing interest for intramural sports—was already completed, further exacerbating his frustration with the lack of effort from administration.

“It’s a little ridiculous to suggest that there’s just not one staff member willing or trained to take up the task,” he said. “Setting up the programs was hard, but they were designed to be able to be executed relatively easily.”

Funding has also been a constant struggle with intramural sports in the past. Poodiack recalled a time when his futsal 5-on-5 indoor soccer team had to fundraise to pay for new equipment.

“The nets they had were really susceptible to breaking because of some fiberglass they had on them that I would cut my hand on every time I tried to open them,” Poodiack said. “We needed to do our own fundraising to get actual safe equipment, which shouldn’t be something students do.”

Poodiack further highlighted the issue with funding for equipment, referencing another situation that occurred last semester.

“We needed something really cheap for basketball, like pinnies or cones, which are only about $30, and we never got them because [the school] wouldn’t approve funding for it,” Poodiack said. “I think I had missed a session that lasted about four or five hours, and thought to myself that the money they saved on my wages could go pay for that equipment.”

Just as there hasn’t been any information for intramural sports this semester at all, there is uncertainty about whether they will make a return in the spring semester.

“I just miss it and I know other students do as well,” Fuller said. “Sports after high school are already hard to come by, and post-college is essentially non-existent, so I really hope Emerson figures it out and we get our intramural sports back.”

The situation especially stings for seniors like Anoh, who only have one more semester to play.

“I think there’s a good chance that it can come back next semester, but none of us really know,” he said. “I would love to have it for my last semester, but if not, then I would absolutely hope that they have it for the incoming class in the next school year.”

For Poodiack, there’s only one answer to the question if intramurals should return at all in the future.

“It’s not an opinion, it’s a simple fact that it’s a great program for the community that is cheap to run as well,” Poodiack said. “It’s not an expensive program to operate that provides a lot of good for the community to connect with each other.”