Competition is brewing as the 2009 intramural flag football season gets underway. Despite the rain and rescheduling of games, participants are overall excited to play intramurals.
For Clay Poole, a sophomore in civil engineering, intramurals offer him a chance to wet his competition whistle.
“I like competition and intramural offers me a chance to get a taste of it again,” Poole said. “I didn’t get a chance to play in high school and playing allows me to make up for it.”
With no previous football experience Poole’s team, consisting of friends he met last year while living in the First Year College Commons, is off to a great start. Poole’s team, the Huge Luminescent Tan, is currently 3-0.
“The first two games went well, we won 47-0 and 62-0,” Poole said. “The last one was a little nerve-wrecking. The final score was 16-12. The competition began to get really intense and at times, I was nervous that we wouldn’t win.”
Avid sports player Kyle Jackson said he plays intramural flag football just for the fun of it.
“I always have played sports, so it’s just fun to get out there and play with friends,” Jackson, a junior in history education, said. “The competition on the fields is not heavy, but people do play their best — you got to play your best if you want to win.”
Two games into his second season, Jackson’s team, The Wookie Slaves, is currently 0-2 but its momentum is picking up.
“We got killed the first game because we did not really know each other, or what we were doing,” Jackson said. “The second game was a lot closer because we were more comfortable with each other and had a better grasp of all the weird flag football rules.”
One of the new changes to intramural flag football is the addition of a new league. This year there is an elite league. For an additional cost and priority scheduling, highly aggressive teams can play each other to increase the toughness of competition. This league is added to the typical line up consisting of men’s and women’s open, men’s residence, fraternity, sorority, co-ed and the grad/staff/facility teams.
“The elite leagues are for those who really want to play competitively,” Travis Wilborn, student director of officials for intramural sports, said.
Forrest Moog, a junior in sports management, is the quarterback for his team and participating in his third consecutive season. This year he is playing on three teams; men’s open, men’s elite and a co-ed team.
“I designate my free time for football, so being on three teams is not a big deal,” Moog said. “I play because I like football — it is fun. I have no motivation to exercise unless I am playing sports, so football gives me a reason to do something.”
