By On a typical weekday evening, students flock to the Hunthausen Activity Center (HAC), where games of volleyball, basketball, pickleball, or table tennis are being played for the most important award of all: Bragging rights.
Students are afforded multiple opportunities for recreation here at Carroll College. Carroll offers resources like the HAC, which offers fitness classes, weight training equipment, a rock wall, and the Campus Adventure and Mountaineering Program (CAMP).
These resources allow students the opportunity to connect with each other through physical activities and recreation.
A staple program offered at Carroll is the intramural sports leagues. Every semester, two sessions run that allow students the opportunity to compete in sports against one another.
The first session of the fall 2025 semester has already finished up, and the second session has just gotten underway.
The sessions run for several weeks, often with teams playing multiple nights a week during the regular season. After a few weeks, the playoffs begin, and at the end, a winner is crowned the champion of that intramural sport.
The first sessions of this semester included cornhole and sand volleyball. The winners of the cornhole league were a team called Corn to be Wild, featuring Spencer Burger, a senior biochemistry major from Billings, Montana, and Connor Sullivan, a junior pre-elementary education major from Kalispell, Montana.
The sand volleyball winners were the Digging Divas, featuring senior and self-designed major from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Lorence Delacruz, junior and biology major from Miles City, Montana, Taylor Gallo. Sophia Mayes from Silverdale, Washington, Kaden Cox from Wellington, Colorado, and Live Pitcher from Miles City, Montana, are all sophomore nursing students. Lastly, freshman business major Isaac Round, who is from Great Britain.
The current session’s two sports are basketball and table tennis. Nine teams are competing to be the best intramural basketball team on campus this fall, while seven pairs are doing the same in table tennis.
The intramural leagues and the recreation resources as a whole are an important part of the culture here at Carroll.
“I think it’s important that everyone has something to do here, even if you didn’t get recruited, you still have an opportunity to play competitive ball here,” said Kolbe Michaud, a freshman cybersecurity major from Helena.
The HAC recently asked students to fill out a survey to get feedback on the numerous resources that they offer. The HAC asked about everything from adding specific exercise equipment to questions about scheduling fitness classes, and of course, questions about intramurals.
The survey received around 250 replies. Among the questions asked was one about what sports should be offered by the intramural program.
By far the most common answer was volleyball, followed by pickleball, spikeball, and basketball.
“I would say overall the data confirmed what we were assuming about what students are interested in,” said Bradly Maddock, Director of Campus Recreation. “It really confirmed that we seem to be running a program that is in line with what students are interested in.”
Looking forward to next spring, Maddock says there might be some changes to what sports are offered. The fan favorite volleyball will return for the first session, but they are also looking into racketball or badminton – though nothing is set in stone just yet.
