As fall and winter arrive, this is a great time for you to join an intramural activity on campus to keep yourself active when that cold and snow sneak around the corner.

With activities like flag football, 3-on-3 basketball, yoga and volleyball, there are a lot of activities taking place on campus for anyone to get involved. With about 20 events per semester, that’s about 40 for the whole year, it is pretty easy to get involved with some sort of event.

“We have a lot of stuff going on,” said Nicole Darling, assistant director of student activities, campus activities and intramurals.

New intramural activities added last year include tennis, golf and the bags tournaments. Darling said that they were very successful and will be played again this year.

One of the newest activities taking place on campus is yoga. It’s held every Tuesday night at 6 p.m. with 2002 Simpson alum, Miranda Steinfeld, heading up the program. Darling said that the first week of yoga was very successful, with over 50 people coming to the wrestling room to try it out.

Flag football and the 3-on-3 basketball tournaments are currently taking place. Flag football is being played on the intramural fields north of the baseball diamond while inside events like 3-on-3 basketball and volleyball are taking place in Hopper gym or Cowles gym.

With 18 teams competing in flag football and 14 teams taking the court for 3-on-3 basketball, Darling said she is very happy with the numbers so far this year.

Prizes for intramural champions are no different from past years. Darling said that intramural champion t-shirts are given out to the majority of the champions while other prizes such as shorts, cozies or even money are used as prizes for some of the smaller events.

Darling said that the most popular intramural events are the volleyball and 3-on-3 basketball tournaments for various reasons.

“These two sports can be played at any level,” said Darling.

Basketball and volleyball are also popular because they are not individual events, which allow friends to play with and against each other at any level of skill.

Intramurals will also once again be offering tickets to such sporting events as Minnesota Timberwolves and Drake Bulldog basketball games and Minnesota Wild and Des Moines Buccaneers hockey matches.

Last year alone, 65 percent of students on campus took part in some sort of an intramural tournament. A total of 870 students were involved in fall intramural events while 1,145 students took part in the spring.

Darling said that she would like to keep the same amount of people involved and not let that number dwindle.

“We are trying to improve on getting out the information to the freshman so they know where to sign up.”

Champions for frisbee golf and four-point pitch have already been decided this year with Iam Podgorniak winning Frisbee golf and the duo of Mike Fisher and Dustin Smothers winning four-point pitch.

With volleyball starting soon and the pool tournament just around the corner, there are a lot of things going on to keep those extra pounds off this year.