It’s said that when chased by a bear, you don’t need to outrun the bear; you just need to outrun your friend. Similarly, to win a championship or a game, you need only to beat the immediate competition. Studies have shown that competition and competitiveness run in the veins.
Here at Keene State College, there is a chance to stay competitive without having a 24/7 commitment. According to the Keene State website, “Intramural sports is a great way to meet new people, reconnect with friends, continue playing the sports you have grown to love, or try a new activity.”
The coordinator of KSC intramural sports is David Sweeney. “My job is to basically handle all administrative duties like setting up registration, reserving space, scheduling, being the main contact for all participants and then on the other side, the staffing part,” Sweeney said.
He continued, “the officials, scorekeepers [and] supervisors; training them, scheduling them, especially training them inTsports to officiate, which is not as easy as one might think. It is a lot more in depth than people can expect.”
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Senior and official for intramural sports Austin Marino said intramurals is one of the better jobs to have on campus. Marino is a referee for soccer, both indoor and outdoor, basketball, dodgeball and volleyball.
“We do training for every sport; we sit in the classroom and go over the rules and then we’ll go and scrimmage on whatever sport it is,” Marino said.
Just this past fall semester alone, there have been about 600 people that participated at least once in intramural sports, Sweeney said.
People get involved for many different reasons. “I’d like to think that there’s a group of people who have played sports their whole life, didn’t get involved in college sports [or] maybe did get involved in college sports, but still just have that urge[and] that competitiveness to keep playing an organized sport,” Sweeney said.
Senior Joseph Sarr works and plays for intramural sports. “I play intramural because of the community and the competitive aspect. If it’s a good sport, we can get really competitive. I think it’s great to be able to show up a couple times a week and see your friends and spend time,” Sarr said.
Sweeney said some do it to make new friends. “Maybe [first-years] put together a team full of their dorm or their floor, so it’s a way to meet new people and then also, we have certain sports where athletes are able to play their related sport and it’s basically like an off-season training for them.”
Sweeney couldn’t emphasize enough that intramurals is a good form of stress relief. “The biggest thing that I think is it’s a great way for stress relief for a lot of students [and] a lot of people that are just naturally super competitive. It’s a way to get that competitiveness out in an organized fashion without pissing people off and to just stay in shape; people love sports, they love playing sports and being active and this is a way of being active without having to have yourself be the only source of motivation,” he said.
There’s a saying in intramural sports: ‘What’s it all about.’ “‘It’s all about the shirt,’ that’s not a phrase; that’s what everything should be about, but the most coveted t-shirt on the entire campus is an intramural championship t-shirt. People perform and compete to win that t-shirt, to be able to wear that on or off campus, and say ‘Yeah… I’m the best,’ Sweeney said.
Shelby Iava can be contacted at siava@kscequinox.com
