Over the summer, Campus Recreation, formerly Recreational Sports, made the move to the new Wellness, Education, Leisure and Lifestyle Center.

Prior to the move, the program was housed in offices throughout the University Union on all three floors. The Well has allowed Campus Recreation to centralize operations and grow into 153,000 square feet of usable floor space for recreation, health and total-body wellness for student use.

The Well has given the three programs within Campus Recreation: Intramural Sports, Intercollegiate Varsity Club Sports and Facilities and Informal Recreation, the opportunity to reach more of the student body.

The Well officially began full-time operations Sept. 2 and has seen 20,542 members come through the doors in its first two weeks, said Jessica Roesemann, member services manager for The Well.

Coordinator of Facilities and Informal Recreation Ted Mackey said the challenge of moving into a new facility was based in hiring additional employees to help run each of the new recreation areas within The Well.

“The Well is really about opportunity. To go from our smaller program of Recreational Sports to Campus Recreation and the Well, has taken us from a 60-student staff to just over a 200-student staff,” Mackey said. “That is quite an expansion in itself right there.”

Mackey said with the current hours of operation, The Well has allowed more students to have access to the programs that Campus Recreation offers at Sacramento State.

“With the expansion of our hours, Monday to Thursday, we are open 18 hours a day, which is quite amazing because our programming before we used to be open 10 hours a day,” Mackey said. “Now students have the opportunity to use the open recreation side of Campus Recreation from 6 a.m. to midnight.”

The biggest obstacle for Rich Clakely, coordinator of Intercollegiate Varsity Club Sports, was hunting down all of his materials and transporting them to The Well.

“It has been challenging at times, as any move would be. Getting everything moved from one place to another, finding it all, putting it in boxes, moving and unpacking it has been a challenge,” Clakely said. “This was compounded by the opening of a brand new building that is 153,000 square feet. It has been an exciting period the last two months.”

Clakely said with The Well’s opening and the added hours of operation, the Varsity Club Sports program has seen an increase in new member numbers over last year.

“All of our programs have expanded dramatically because of the new facility. We are in the process of registering the clubs for the fall semester, but I know already that we have over 70 women signed for women’s rugby club,” Clakely said. “They have eclipsed the men’s team and before the move last year, they had 40 members. So they have almost doubled in size.”

Sean Basso, coordinator of Intramural Sports, said the move for the Intramural Sports and Intercollegiate Varsity Club Sports was based on a sense of bonding during the transition to The Well.

“Intramural Sports and Intercollegiate Varsity Club Sports knew it would come down to forming a strong base for their existence and then just seamlessly moving it from the current location to the Well,” Basso said. “So the expansion that we were faced with, opening on Sept. 2, is what we focused on during the year. It was more of expansion than moving.”

Basso said the use of his department and the other departments within Campus Recreation is up significantly.

“The turnout of students has been amazing. Our grand opening on Sept. 2 saw more than 6,000 students come through the doors to take a tour of the new facilities,” Basso said. “Our world’s largest dodgeball event broke the world record for the most people playing dodgeball at one time with 1,209 students.”

Roesemann feels that each department within The Well has the ability to reach each and every student through adopted goal of total body health.

“The entire staff here, including all three partners, Campus Recreation, Student Health Services, and Peak Adventures, are committed to living and promoting our mission, which is “Lifetime Wellness through Collaboration, Education, and Innovation’,” Roeseman said. “Through all of services and facilities provided, we seek to enhance wellness which is a multi-dimensional process of achieving a healthy balance throughout one’s lifetime.”

Matt Harrington can be reached at [email protected]