Intramural and club sports at ACU continue to bounce back after a couple of years, during which many programs hit the pause button.

ACU’s director of intramural and club sports, Dante Hibbert, who previously coached for the Wildcats football team, said the biggest factor behind the break was COVID-19.

“Our club sports right now are flourishing,” Hibbert said. “They had to close them during COVID, and last year after COVID, so they hadn’t really been marketed much. But just getting into this role, one of the things that we are marketing more is this.”

Hibbert has played a big role in getting things going again by listening to what people want. He said one of the biggest achievements in this transition has been establishing ACU’s club golf team.

“We’ve got a guy who just walked in, and he started our golf club,” Hibbert said. “We started it literally last week. They played in a tournament this week, and they went up against A&M, Texas and SMU.”

The results were stellar. In the Wildcats’ opening season, Hibbert said one golfer placed ninth, another 11th, and the last 35th out of 55.

A lot of the time, intramural and club sports are overlooked for their effectiveness, Hibbert said. He said golf has directly impacted student engagement and retention.

“I had a student tell me the other day, ‘I wasn’t going to come to ACU because they didn’t have a club golf team,’” Hibbert said. “Now we do. That’s a big deal.”

ACU currently has club teams in basketball, swimming, volleyball and baseball, and even bass fishing is thriving.

On the intramural side, Hibbert said he is also trying to integrate intramurals with ACU athletics to make the campus feel more unified.

“We’re trying to close that gap,” Hibbert said. “I did two games in Moody after basketball games. That made students feel welcome in the same room as our varsity athletes.”

In addition, weekend tournaments, like pickleball and table tennis, help keep students engaged.

“I call ACU ‘not a weekend school’ because all the stuff is closed, but when you have weekend tournaments, that’s the beginning of people staying,” Hibbert said.

As more students participate and new club teams are added, there is always room for growth and advancement. Hibbert said if anyone has questions or wants to talk about anything intramural or club-related, just swing by his office in the rec center.