Ever since grade school, Scott Flickinger wanted to be a veterinarian. He never realized that campus recreation could be, in his words, “a viable career” until he was a student at The Ohio State University. He became a referee for intramural flag football, was invited to work games at a series of regional flag football tournaments (before they evolved into the NIRSA Championship Series in 2013) and significantly altered his career path along the way. Now, nearly 30 years later, and after serving several NIRSA groups, Flickinger is president-elect of the NIRSA Board of Directors.
“I attribute it all to my experience with the Championship Series,” says the director of campus recreation at State University of New York (SUNY) Cortland. “It taught me leadership skills and got me excited about getting involved with NIRSA.”
Indeed, throughout the history of the NIRSA Championship Series, it’s become obvious that volunteering in some way at either the regional or national levels can help prepare campus recreation professionals — especially younger ones — for career growth. That growth, in turn, helps create stronger campus recreation departments.
Each year, the NIRSA Championship Series gives college recreational sports participants in basketball, flag football, soccer, tennis and pickleball an opportunity to compete, coordinate and officiate with their peers from other schools at the state, regional and national levels on campuses around the country.
Similarly, campus recreation professionals who volunteer to work those events report experiences that have helped them find greater professional success. Skills enhancement, mentorship access, national connections and an enhanced sense of belonging are among the most common rewards NIRSA officials hear about from Championship Series volunteers.
“I’ll tell you that there are several instances where the place I was professionally at the time would not have happened without my involvement in the Championship Series and the network that I built, the skills that I acquired,” says Erik Jaeke, director of member engagement for University Recreation & Wellbeing (Rec Well) at the University of Wisconsin — which, incidentally, hosted the Championship Series National Basketball Championships in Madison the past three years.
Soccer ref success
Jaeke’s involvement in the NIRSA Championship Series dates back to 2007, when he was a campus recreation graduate student at Drake University and his supervisor took him to Iowa’s state flag football championships. There, he began learning about how the state, regional and national championships work.
Smitten with the structure and atmosphere of the Championship Series, Jaeke began volunteering to work flag football and basketball tournaments. During his tenure at Northern Arizona University, he started building his Championship Series network, eventually receiving an invitation to referee at the NIRSA Soccer National Championships. (Soccer is the only Championship Series sport that utilizes college game officials instead of student officials). In 2019, a few years after he arrived at Wisconsin, Jaeke became director of soccer officials for the Championship Series.
“When I was a soccer referee, the system was made up of primarily men who had attended the event for several years. An opportunity gap existed, both for up-and-coming referees and also for women,” he says. “NIRSA asked me to step in and lead, and I’m really proud that we built a new model that brought greater equity for people of all genders. Back in the day, you might have seen one or two officials who didn’t identify as male out of the 80 refs that were at a tournament.”
Today, there is a better balance between male and female referees, as well as officials who identify as non-binary, and the median age has dropped from 55 to mid-20s. Part of the reason, Jaeke says, is that he and other campus rec professionals created a culture in which club soccer players are continually encouraged to also enter the officiating ranks within their local communities.
“It’s been a really cool shift, because we’re providing an opportunity for officials to work their way up — from junior college to Division III, Division II, Division I and then into the pros,” Jaeke says. “We built partnerships with assigners, officials, assessors and mentors from around the country and with major conferences such as the ACC, the Big East and the Big Ten. They come out to the Championship Series national tournament to assess referees and help them move up.”
As a result of his involvement with multiple aspects of the Championship Series, Jaeke was tapped to be president of the NIRSA Sports Network Board of Directors, a new entity that helps manage operations for NIRSA Championship Series sports leagues — a role that also has translated to new responsibilities at Wisconsin, where he heads a recently created group that oversees Rec Well’s sponsor relationships.
“I think the work we did in soccer translates directly into my job now, especially regarding change management,” he says. “So much of my role now is about visioning, being creative and thinking about the future. It’s also helped me manage conflict, because sometimes the conflict that happens in sport is some of the most intense conflict that you can encounter. The hardest step in all of this is just choosing to get involved — and then the more you volunteer, the more you’re going to get out of it.”
‘Why can’t we do it?’
For Flickinger, his early experiences with the NIRSA Championship Series helped him bring a better understanding of the opportunities it provides for both students and professionals to his role as program coordinator of intramural sports and facilities at Ithaca College. He took students to tournaments and encouraged them to participate as officials. During his subsequent two years as assistant manager of intramural and club sports at Boston College, Flickinger learned about the planning and logistics as a host site for the Championship Series. Then, at Cornell University, he followed the same blueprint he created at Ithaca by encouraging participation in the Championship Series in ways that the university had never done before. He also became executive chair of the NIRSA Championship Series in 2019.
“What I got, and what the students got, from the Championship Series were opportunities to work in extramural tournaments and learn a lot of the core competencies you need to be successful,” Flickinger says. “As I went through the Championship Series, I learned the executive side of the NIRSA Championship Series, like how to communicate with supporters and teams. It really opened my eyes to leadership style and leadership management.”
By the time he arrived at SUNY Cortland in 2023, Flickinger felt sufficiently confident in his familiarity and experience with the NIRSA Championship Series to bid on hosting the 2026 Region I Basketball Tournament. That bid was successful, and in March 2026, SUNY Cortland became one of the few Division III institutions to ever host a Championship Series regional event. The university will host the 2027 regional basketball tournament, too.
“We said, ‘Why can’t we do it?’ We’re not Division I, but we have the personnel, we have the facilities, we have the infrastructure and community support,” Flickinger says. “We can do this, too, and show everyone that we’ve got a pretty premier program here. It put us on the map as an institution that not only cares about students’ wellbeing, but also about the learning opportunities this presents.”
