At the beginning of the semester, the University hired two new staff members for intramural sports. These hires were Matt Seibring and Dan Payne. Seibring, a graduate of Saint Cloud State University, was hired as the new Assistant Director of Intramural Sports, while Payne, a graduate of Florida State University, was hired as the Coordinator for Intramural Sports. Seibring went to graduate school at West Florida and then began working for Southern Mississippi for three years before coming to State. Payne was a graduate assistant at Iowa University before taking the N.C. State job.
Technician: What are some of your goals you have for intramural sports program since you have taken over.
A: Seibring: “One of the main things we want to push is that we want to create good student leaders amongst our student staff. The supervisors, evaluators, officials and the behind the scenes students who set things up, we just want to develop them into good student leaders.”
Also, we are very big on sportsmanship and we are here to provide an opportunity for people to go out and have fun. It’s more fun when people are out there planning for that reason and it allows more participants to go out there and enjoy themselves when people are arguing and screaming at everyone.”
Technician: Have you come in and changed anything that used to be here before you arrived?
A: Seibring: “We both came close to the beginning of the school year and program-wise, we haven’t changed a whole lot in what is being offered because we were here so quick. I had a relationship with the people who had run the IM Sports beforehand so they had a good relationship with me. But the biggest thing would be is that people have noticed the consequences for ejections have become a little more severe. You can’t scream and yell at another student or a student official, and if you do, there will be consequences.”
Technician: What is your opinion of getting field turf for the intramural fields?
Seibring: “Our drainage system is pretty old and it doesn’t work at its maximum capacity. But the field is not run by Intramural Sports. It is a part of the Carmichael Complex and they are the ones who run the fields. As far as synthetic stuff, that is something that is in talks. It would be extremely beneficial for our program and our participants and it is something that we would love to have. But it comes back to the financial side of it. However, if we did get the chance to get an artificial field we would only have to cancel games if it were lighting because we would have to worry about the field becoming slippery and risking injury to the participants. The goal is to get an artificial surface so that we don’t cancel for what is coming down, but instead for the conditions of the field for the safety of the students.”
Payne: “With the field turf we would also be able to provide more opportunities to play. Right know we build in rain weeks and rain days ahead of time, but if we had field turf we wouldn’t have to do that as much. “
Technician: How are you training referees for IM Sports and dealing with complaints about referees?
Seibring: “We want to continue to teach them. We have bi-weekly meetings with them where we go over different situations, rule interpretations and how we see things in a game. We have our older and most experienced officials out there evaluating the newer officials and they will go up at halftime or at the end of the game, and talk to the official and explain to them things they need to do better.
The people who come in from playing high school sports are coming in with a completely different set of ideas about officials. People that officiate high school games have a lot more experience and its tough for students to come in and do it. We need to educate the people playing and let them know that it is harder than you think and just to give them a break.”
Payne: “An extra burden is that our officials are officiating over their peers, which is a lot different than most high school levels. Those officials are older than the people participating in those programs. So, it is difficult for those people to go to class with one of your buddies than go and have to officiate his game.”
Technician: What would you say to the participants who believe they may know more than the officials who are calling the game?
Seibring: “I would challenge those people to come and work for us. If they know more, than they should come and should want to be involved. For the most part, people that come and officiate a sport are usually the ones who have played that sport in the past. People who think they know more are usually wrong. They usually don’t know the rules. They may think they know more, but they don’t.”
Technician: How have budget cuts affected the Intramural Sports?
Seibring: “We continually get challenged to find ways to generate revenue. And we are going to do our best to find ways to generate that revenue so we don’t have to cut programs and opportunities that we offer to students. Our goal is to not have to charge for intramural sports, which is very common among campuses across the nation. We want to keep it that way and that is just going to be creativity among us and among our staff so we don’t have to cut back. We always want to push forward and create new things instead of chopping at the stuff we already have.”
