With the first Intramural Flag Football games already played, the campus recreation season is officially underway.

The campus recreation program, commonly known as Campus Rec, organizes all of Washington and Lee’s intramural leagues, its club sports teams, all 23 of W&L’s varsity sports teams and a number of group exercise classes.

While Campus Rec offered all of these programs last year, Director Ray Ellington said that he has worked hard to make activities and classes more accessible to students.

In years past, all registration for exercise classes or for IM teams was done on paper. Now, all of that will be managed online.

“I used to have to email all of the captains and depend on them to communicate with everyone,” Ellington said. “Now everyone who participates gets the emails and is in communication with me. With only a couple of clicks, sports clubs participants can file their paperwork in less than 10 minutes.”

Along with easing registration, Ellington wants to make the Campus Rec programs as inviting and fun for everyone.

“We have a lot of equipment that anyone—any students, groups of hallmates, RAs—can borrow through me, like volleyball nets, wiffle ball bats, corn hole and a lot more,” Ellington said.

All intramural leagues and exercise classes are open to all students. It costs $100 per semester to attend.

The vast majority of group exercise classes are taught by students and, according to Ellington, it is not hard to become certified to teach a class.

The Campus Rec program will assist in setting up prospective class teachers with certification agencies.

With all of the excitement of the upcoming year, it is easy to overlook how the third-year housing expansion will affect the Campus Rec program.

Despite losing the use of several fields for now, Ellington said that he is excited about the future of the Campus Rec program.

“We are getting a third synthetic field that is lit. It will allow us to expand programs and ensure availability of field space because we can play until 11 or 12 at night,” Ellington said.

On top of that, they are also building another all-purpose field over where the “bone yard” is now. Both projects are projected to be completed by fall of next year.