Compared to other Big 12 schools, Iowa State leads in the ratio of total school enrollment to student participation in intramural sports.

A big reason for this is the recreation facilities Iowa State has to offer its students and staff. The Lied Recreational Center gives students the opportunity to play many sports and exercise leisurely, as well as having a facility for intramural sports.

Garry Greenlee, associate director of recreation services, said he and the intramurals staff are always looking and searching for new ideas for intramural sports. Many students come in and ask about different ideas, he said.

When trying out a new sport, such as foosball, the staff first has to find a way to squeeze it into the schedule. They try it for a year and see how popular it is among the students. However, when adding new sports, sometimes deleting a sport has to occur because of money.

“All our sports are popular,” Greenlee said. “Along with popularity, we also have to take into consideration money for officiating and our budget.”

Included in the list of new sports proposed for this year are paintball and disc golf.

“We want to serve as many students as possible,” he said. “Paintball and disc golf will serve a different type of student.”

Recreational sports programs are a tremendous growth industry nationwide and provide a marketable asset to colleges and universities. In the past 20 years, the cost to build a multimillion dollar recreational complex has gone from $2 million to $49 million, according to a 2002 Kerr & Downs Research report “Power of Participants of Recreational Sports on College Campuses.”

The Ames/ISU Ice Arena allows ISU students to play intramural sports that other Big 12 schools do not, including broomball, curling and ice hockey.

There are only three schools in the Big 12 that have the necessary facilities to offer broomball to their students: Nebraska, Colorado and Iowa State. Broomball is the most popular intramural sport on the ISU campus, with 257 men’s teams, 103 women’s teams and 207 co-rec teams last year. Nebraska had 69 men’s teams, 14 women’s teams and 62 co-rec teams. Colorado only had 81 co-rec teams.

ISU men’s hockey coach Alan Murdoch said broomball was first introduced to students as an intramural event in 1972 to offer added variety to the sports already played, according to Daily staff reports.

“It’s hard to imagine it getting bigger than it is [at Iowa State], but it’s huge,” Murdoch said of the growth of the sport on campus.

Ultimate Frisbee has Iowa State in a class of its own. It had 74 men’s teams last year. The next-closest school was Colorado with 12 teams.

Iowa State also led the Big 12 in slow-pitch softball teams. It had 198 men’s teams, one more than Oklahoma State.

With many facilities to use for intramurals, Iowa State can allow for many teams and sports to be played at one time. Greenlee, however, said he is aware that too many sports offered at one time can overload students.

“We have some students that will play them all,” he said. “When making our schedule, we try to have four to five sports going at one time. We put one or two team sports with two or three single-player sports.”

— Daily staff reports contributed to this article.