UB student Bryan Van Vliet was recently elected the new Region I student representative of the National Intramural Recreational Sports Association's (NIRSA) northeast region.
Van Vliet is a senior health and human services major and the assistant sports club director for Recreation & Intramural Services (R&I) at UB.
NIRSA is a national organization that is a leader in higher education recreation that provides approximately 11 million college students with recreational facilities, according to the NIRSA Web site. There are over 4,000 members on 700 campuses across the US.
He was elected to the position while looking for a full-time job at the NIRSA Annual Conference and Recreational Sports Exposition with over 2,400 attendees in Austin, Texas.
"I went to the conference to look for a full-time job and the current national and regional representative asked me to run the night before. I wound up getting the majority support over the other candidates," Van Vliet said.
He has experience in working with NIRSA through R&I, according to Joseph Muscarella, Clark Hall manager and the coordinator for the Sports Club department.
"Bryan works with vendors [that] have brought about decreased cost in equipment purchases, and [he] opens doors that would normally be hard to walk through," Muscarella said.
As a student representative, Van Vliet hopes to acquire more sports equipment next semester. This will allow more access to recreational services and will make it feasible for the university to provide more services, he said. NIRSA provided UB with the cardio deck in Alumni Arena, Kan-Jam and intramural dodge ball in recent years.
Van Vliet will also propose the hiring of a trained medical staff for the intramural teams at the University. He will work with both UB Athletics and NIRSA in his efforts to accomplish this, and has support in the Division of Athletics.
"These procedures and policy updates may save several individuals' lives because our staff is better prepared and trained," Muscarella said.
He will also work to get students more involved in R&I by providing feedback and ideas that he can take with him to the next NIRSA conference.
"What you find out is that every school faces the same problems and if you try something, let people know if it succeeds and [if] it fails, let them know," Van Vliet said. "They try to have conferences at least twice a year - one regional and one nationally - where people can come with new ideas and new programs."
Muscarella is confident that Van Vliet will reflect well on UB in his position.
"Bryan is promoting, presenting and projecting a positive image of UB, which in the end, benefits us all," Mucarella said.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
