Intramural volleyball’s first game marked the beginning of the intramural spring season.
Between three and six hundred students play intramurals each season, according to intramurals athletic director, junior Robert Granholm.
Sophomore Molly Carr, who referees volleyball and plays floor hockey and soccer, agreed intramurals are popular with students.
“Intramurals are one of the biggest things on campus,” Carr said. “It’s really good for communit.”
Intramurals consist of three seasons: fall, winter and spring, and offer a total of nine sports including soccer, basketball, volleyball and a foosball tournament. Anyone can sign up for a team, and the teams in each sport play each other throughout the season.
Intramurals have championship games; the winning team receives intramural t-shirts, which are quite popular with the players.
“It’s big for bragging rights,” said referee and intramural participant, sophomore Jay McClellan.
One reason intramurals are so popular is that they provide an outlet for anyone interested in sports, especially for those who do not play regular sports at Eastern.
“I love sports. I didn’t want my life sucked away [by playing regular sports], so I played intramurals,” Granholm said.
Intramurals attract a wide variety of people. The only students not allowed to play are athletes who play for a regular Eastern sports team, while that sport is in-season, according to Carr.
“You have everyone from serious athletes to people who just want to try it for the first time,” Carr said.
Despite its non-athletic base, intramurals are not laid back.
“They’re competitive, sometimes more than they should be,” McClellan said.
In the spring, this competition becomes especially evident in soccer, when many of the regular soccer players join intramural teams after their soccer season is finished.
“It changes the tone; the competition gets a little bit greater,” Carr said.
Intramurals differ from Eastern’s regular sports not only in the people who play, but also in the games themselves. The games are only forty minutes long in order to fit the most possible games in the two hour time slot allotted per night to intramurals.
Granholm finds regular sports and intramurals to differ in another way too.
“It’s a lot less commitment and a lot more fun [than regular sports],” he said. “You can play anything and everything.”