KU intramural sports change payment plan for 2025-26 school year

Alex Moore | @alex_moore04

The University of Kansas Recreation Services decided to move away from a per-team model to a $15 unlimited semester pass for intramural activities. Intramural activities are sports or events that allow students to be active in college in a casual manner.

Activities include flag football, sand volleyball and bingo nights. This change follows the KU Student Senate’s request for Recreation Services to explore ways to generate additional income.

“We had done a lot of research with our peers at different universities to look at different models, and we just felt that switching to an individual fee would probably be the best way to do it this year,” Jason Krone, director of KU Recreation Services, said.

The new model has come as a surprise for many returning students; many students in the past paid nothing to participate in intramural sports.

“I was pretty surprised,” Enzo Karam, a current KU student, said. “I’ve been playing for two years now, and it was usually some dude on the team would pay, ask for Vemno requests, and nobody else would pay him.”

But with the rise in cost for staff and equipment, Recreation Services was forced to make a change somewhere.

“For students who have been in our program before, I think it has been a shock to the system,” Jon Randle, Assistant Director of Intramural Sports, said. “Unless they’ve been captains in the past, because in the past, it was the captains who were paying that team fee.” 

Another reason that Recreation Services had for the new model was to promote student participation in multiple activities.

“The intent of the pass was to encourage students to play multiple sports, and I think that is what we are seeing is that a student purchases the pass and says, ‘You know what, I’ve paid for this with my hard-earned money’,” Randle said. “So, let me get the biggest bang for my buck.’”

Recreation Services is continually looking at ways to add more events to its list to combat the higher cost. For this semester, they added fantasy leagues for Love is Blind, The Golden Bachelor, and Dancing with the Stars, and more to be announced next semester. 

Recreation Services has said that it will reevaluate the effectiveness of the model at the end of the 2026 spring semester.