SUNY Plattsburgh Recreation Offerings Benefit Campus Community

Recreational sports at SUNY Plattsburgh aren’t just for the students.

Faculty, staff and alumni can avail themselves of many offerings available through the recreational sports and programs office, administered by Director Melissa LaMere out of her Memorial Hall office.

“What many don’t know is that in 2019, the campus created a mandatory rec fee. The fitness center had been a separate option fee for campus members,” LaMere said. “But since 2019, it’s one fee, so faculty and staff pay a membership fee, which covers not just the fitness center but recreation’s operation as well.”

That means that membership fee payers have access to the equipment issue program, intramurals, open rec times in the recreation gym, and more.

“They have access to everything students do except student club sports,” LaMere said. That’s everything, from the bike loan program to pickup cricket games, pickleball to the more-than-12,000-square-feet of fitness center.

‘Plethora of Opportunities’

“It creates a plethora of opportunities for everyone,” she said.

The equipment issue program provides borrowers a large selection of sports and recreation offerings. Inside a room behind the rec desk, found on the second floor of Memorial Hall, just to the right of the glass entry doors, is a small sporting goods lending library.

There are basketballs, volleyballs, dodgeballs and bocci balls, snow sleds, Frisbee discs for the campus disc golf course in Rugar Woods behind the Field House, snow shoes, fishing poles and lures, hammocks, softball gloves, lawn games like spike ball, can jam, ladder toss and corn hole, complete with Burghy logo.

“We have some students who borrow snow shoes as they work on becoming winter 46ers,” LaMere said. “Faculty and staff make use of them as well.”

LaMere said she often works with residence hall staff who are doing programming for their floors, or departments and divisions doing events and other outreach as well.

Popular Bike Loan Program

The bike loan program is very popular, she said. In addition to the mountain bikes that hang from the wall in the bike room just off the rec gym, are four new cruisers that LaMere was able to acquire this season.

Weather permitting, she said the bikes are available early spring through fall.

“If the weather’s nice, we’re out of bikes as soon as we open,” she said. Borrowers just fill out a form at the rec desk and off they go, she said. Be forewarned: Bikes are chipped for easy tracking should they go missing.

The popular court sport pickleball is new this year, being offered Wednesdays in the rec gym from noon to 2 p.m.

“I initially wanted to start small,” LaMere said. “I didn’t know what the demand would be. We have three courts, so 12 people can play at one time. I’m open to expanding to different days and times, but the rec gym is booked most evenings for club and pick-up sports.”

As for students, LaMere said some 300 participate in the campus’ 12 club sports, which include:

• Cheerleading
• Esports
• Golf
• High Voltage Dance Factory
• Hockey
• Tennis
• Volleyball

“Intercollegiate athletics are at a higher level, with a bigger time commitment. Club sports offer students a range of opportunity they might not otherwise have,” LaMere said. “Club hockey meets once a week at the Field House. Men and women rugby competes in the National Small College Rugby Conference and play in the National Small College Rugby Conference North League, so they’re nationally ranked.”

The esports club “is huge,” LaMere said. “It used to be housed in Macomb, but I had a larger room built in Memorial Hall for them. It’s incredibly popular.”

The esports club room, just down the hall from LaMere’s office, has consoles, gaming chairs, viewing couches and a large flat screen wall-mounted television. She said when she gave tours to 8^th grade students participating in the I’ve Been Accepted to College program, the students told her it was a highlight of their day.

A Way to Connect

Growing out of the pandemic when sports were shuttered during lockdown, esports started as a way to connect. SUNY then partnered with Extreme Networks and LeagueSpot to launch the first system-wide esports league.

Today, the SUNY league includes SUNY colleges and universities statewide, with more than 2,000 student players who compete across the State University of New York and beyond. SUNY Plattsburgh fields a club of about 30 students. LaMere said the club breaks down to individual teams, which plays games such as Splatoon, Smash Bros., League of Legends and Marvel Rivels.

Rec membership fees are payable online or at the Student Accounts Office and range from $88.50 for students per semester, $40 for the summer, to $95 per semester for faculty and staff, $55 for summer, and $115 per semester and $75 for the summer for alumni. Membership is limited to students, faculty, staff, alumni, spouses and domestic partners.

For more information on all the recreational sports and programs have to offer, contact LaMere at 518—564-4536, email [email protected] or visit www.plattsburgh.edu/athletics/recreational.

— By Associate Director of Communications Gerianne Downs

— Photos by Gerianne Downs and Hunter Mossey, multimedia coordinator