With varsity sports currently at the lull between seasons, the athletic focus has shifted squarely to intramurals. Champions in soccer have been crowned, and teams are fighting to get into basketball’s finals. First, however, IM Insider takes you to the new intramural sport that almost happened this past weekend.
Swimming: The inaugural Intramural Swim Meet, which was scheduled for last Saturday at Ratner Center, was cancelled on Friday. The decision to cancel the meet was made by Director of the Office of Intramural, Recreation, and Sport Clubs Tamsen Burke, who notified managers through e-mail.
Burke introduced the swim meet this year in order to take advantage of the new pool on campus. A number of standard swimming events were planned, from individual events to relays, as well as diving and the “Big Splash” competition. The difficulty in making students aware of the meet played a large part in the low signup total.
“I think the meet should have been held earlier in the quarter, while IM reps were still fresh, and posters should have been put up in the locker rooms, so that the swimmers who do lap swimming every day could have known about it,” said third-year Linda Ding.
Four teams were registered by Wednesday’s deadline, two men’s and two women’s teams, in addition to a handful of individual swimmers. Each participant was limited to four events—three individual events and one relay. Some managers suggested lifting that restriction so that the competition could be salvaged.
In the e-mail sent to managers, Burke explained the considerations made in deciding whether or not the meet had sufficient entries. “Yes, it is unfortunate that we have offered a sport that highlights our new pool and limited entries were submitted,” wrote Burke. “When running programs we must always think of others who would be displaced by our program, i.e. free swim, family swim, and other programming opportunities.”
Yet managers felt it was not made clear what programs would be displaced during the reserved time period. “I felt the swim meet cancellation was very last-minute,” said Ding. “Tamsen claimed that we would be displacing other users of the pool, but the meet was scheduled for noon. Open swim ends at 11 am and doesn’t resume until 3 pm, so I’m not sure who we would be displacing.”
While the swim meet has not been officially rescheduled, Burke says that she will try to get participants in the inner-tube water polo leagues to crossover into swimming. The intramurals program is currently considering other solutions.
“It is also important for us to look at the opportunity to host this competition at a later date. We continue to solicit interest for a spring competition,” wrote Burke in her e-mail to swim meet managers.
Basketball: The basketball playoffs started last week, and last night’s games have solidified championship games in the men’s leagues.
The Revolution’s tough defense helped them down the stretch against the Soccer Ballers in a 46-45 victory that placed them in the men’s undergraduate independent championships against The AKs.
The Ballers called a timeout with nine seconds left and set a play to try to win on a last-second shot. They ended up getting a 14-foot jump shot off, which hit the rim and was rebounded by the Revolution to seal the win.
The team is dedicating its championship run to “putting any song but ‘Who Let The Dogs Out’ on in Ratner.”
The men’s undergraduate residence championship will definitely include Vincent House, which beat Chamberlain 37-35. Their opponent is pending a protest by Coulter House that the Plumbers used ineligible players in their 59-44 victory last night.
Soccer: Champions were named in all three leagues last weekend. In the women’s league, Apathy defeated the Graham Reapers. Co-ed Broadview United was never threatened in their 6-1 win over Gustaf’s Army.
Hoover and Linn-Matthews squared off in the men’s championship, where Hoover pulled out an easy 5-1 victory.
There’s no truth to the rumor that Linn-Matthews is planning on buying the game ball off eBay and destroying it on network television.
