By Erin O’Sullivan
For the past 15 years, NIRSA members have been raising the bar(bells); hosting yoga, aerobic, Zumba and spin classes; providing dance-offs and shoot-outs; and inspiring a general swell of late-winter fitness on and around February 22.
(Top) A great look at the Rec Day excitement from the University of Texas, San Antonio (@UTSACampusRec). (Bottom) A poster advertising Rec Day activities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (@UNLCampusRec).The celebration of NIRSA’s founding date has grown each year. Institutions and individual members from across North America have demonstrated awesome creativity and passion in how they use this celebration to inspire their communities. Whether it was offering free fitness classes, like Marshall University and San Jacinto College; competitions like the University of Nevada, Reno, Illinois State University, and Colorado State University; or incentives for students to come out and get active like Northern Arizona University and Drexel University, there was indeed something for everyone!
Plenty of individuals got in on the action too! From NIRSA leaders, like Kathleen Hatch and Jacque Hamilton, getting their rec on with campus peers to active and engaged students, the celebration of fitness and wellbeing was spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Accordingly, celebrations have also morphed from taking place solely on February 22, to multi-day or week-long festivities, to events happening earlier in February or even later in March. Some events—like Towson University’s NIRSA Day Olympics, which took advantage of the coinciding Sochi Winter Olympics—looked to play off of other happenings on campus and beyond.
Other events were timed to maximize student participation; since February 22 fell on a weekend this year, many campuses choose to celebrate on a different date (like Marymount California). The result was a spectacular, nearly two-week long North American Rec Day celebration!
Two of the winning tweets from @UO Rec Fitness and @sweetmirabelle.One exciting addition to this year’s Rec Day celebrations was the #RecDay hashtag, which allowed institutions and individuals the opportunity to share their energy, ideas, and rec love with the broader NIRSA membership (and beyond!). The diversity and breadth of celebrations was truly wowing!
To encourage this sharing and networking, NIRSA Headquarters offered a NIRSA “swag bag” give-away to one #RecDay tweet would be chosen at random. The University of Oregon Fitness crew had the winning tweet, which featured students engaging in inclusive rec by playing “Sit to Hit Volleyball.”
However, we were so wonderfully overwhelmed by Rec Day love that we selected two more tweets at random to receive NIRSA t-shirts. @sweetmirabelle won with her tweet on The Southern Alberta Institute of Technology’s Rec Day events and so did @biz_khalifaa who retweeted a Rec Day picture from Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
Search the #RecDay hashtag to revisit all the wonderful action for yourself. You can also visit the NIRSA “Campus Rec Programming” board on Pinterest, as we’re continually pinning inspiring action shots from campuses’ Rec Days. Enjoy the inspiration and get ready to gear up for Rec Day 2015!
