Michelle Berthiaume
Equinox Staff
There’s a saying in sports: “It’s not all about winning.” But for six Keene State College students, that’s exactly what it’s all about.
Since last year, Jake Plourde, Cam Drouin, Mike Bernard, Mike Jensen, Brian Jones, and Brendan Hussey have competed in numerous recreational sports.
They pride themselves on competing for the championship in every event they play.
In fact, they are really setting the bar high for this year. Their goal: win ten intramural sports titles. And so far, they are off to a great start.
For every championship they win, they get a t-shirt from the Rec. Sports Department.
“Basically, we want to win everything before we graduate and this is our last chance,” senior Jake Plourde said.
Plourde said the team began heavily competing in multiple sports last year.
[singlepic id=590 w=320 h=240 float=right] “Last year, we won six or seven t-shirts and we did well in a lot of things,” Plourde said. “So our goal this year is to win 10 championships, and get into the double digits.”
Some college students have a hard time letting go of the feeling that competing in sports gave them back in high school.
Team Captain, senior Cam Drouin, played multiple sports in high school.
When arriving at KSC, he said he struggled to find a way to feed his competitiveness like he used to. He said one day he found his answer: compete in intramural sports.
“I played sports in high school, and I came here and played baseball for a little bit but it just wasn’t as fun, so I started playing rec sports,” Drouin said.
Drouin said he kept his love for sports upon graduating high school and brought his competitive nature with him to KSC.
“Without sports, I really don’t think I would have a life,” Drouin said. “It’s fun for me, and it’s in my blood to be competitive.”
Drouin said he doesn’t know what he’s going to do when he graduates from KSC, but he said he will definitely miss all the sports and games.
“If we aren’t in class, we are at the gym or playing sports,” Drouin said. “We are always doing something and I am going to miss that.”
So far, the team has won three team championships and two individual championships. “We’ve won floor hockey, co-ed softball, and men’s softball,” Brendan Hussey said. “I won tennis and Jake [Plourde] won pickle ball.”
The team is already halfway to their goal of winning 10 t-shirts for their senior year.
“It’s a good feeling to win,” Hussey said. “We just want to win as much as we can before we graduate.”
The team plays in every sport they think they could win.
“We compete really well in the weird sports,” Plourde said. “We dominated in kickball, we did really well in softball, I won pickleball, Brendan [Hussey] won tennis and we usually do really well in wiffleball.”
Plourde said the team likes to do well, and is pretty good at most of the sports they compete in.
He said if the team doesn’t think they are going to do well at a sport, they simply won’t compete in that one.
In order to win as many championships as they have, a team needs great chemistry, like any other competitive sports team. And chemistry is something this team has a lot of.
“We get along great, we hang out every weekend, whether we have games or not,” Drouin said.
Hussey said the team is just a good group of friends who like to compete and, of course, win.
“We are all very competitive,” Hussey said. “Four of us went to high school together so we’ve been playing sports for like 10 years together, and we just kind of wanted to keep that going.”
The team’s overarching goal is to win 10 t-shirts, but specifically they are after the rec basketball championship, which takes place in winter.
Drouin said basketball is the toughest sport to win and is the team’s primary focus this winter.
“Basketball is a big one for us,” Plourde said. “It’s the toughest one to win, mainly because there’s a lot more students that play in the basketball league, so that would be a cool one to win.”
In order to win the basketball championship, the team will compete against some very good teams, but they are willing to take the challenge.
Competing in so many different sports holds an array of challenges. One of the biggest challenges this team faces is managing the members’ time well enough to compete in every sport and also keep their grades up so they can graduate this spring.
“I work for intramural sports and I am friends with my boss, so I talk to her a lot and make sure our team gets good times,” Drouin said. “We usually play late at night because most of us are in class until about eight or nine.”
Drouin said it gets really hectic during the week. He said last week, the team had intramural sports from eight until midnight every night.
The team will continue their search for ten championships in the spring semester when intramural sports pick up again.
Michelle Berthiaume can be contacted at mberthiaume@ksc.mailcruiser.com