Spring intramurals ready to go, flag football makes its debut

This spring will witness a trial run for men’s flag football intramurals. The season will run for two weeks at the end of March and a week in April.

“I’m still on the fence as to whether to make it a real intramural,”intramurals director Rob Granholm said.

Granholm, a senior Information Technologies major, has been running the intramurals program for three years. Student interest prompted him to try out flag football as part of this year’s spring intramurals.

“It’s something I know a lot of guys are passionate about, so I’m going to try to make it happen – to do what I can,” he said.

According to Granholm, the challenges to running a flag football program include issues of safety and rules-keeping. The complexity of the sport means that the referees need a good understanding of what is happening on the field, and need to be able to act as more than just scorekeepers.

Nevertheless, Granholm concedes that “depending on the response, I’ll make it a full-out season.” He would like to see at least four teams of11 players each turn out for the three-week trial run.

By comparison, co-ed intramural soccer, which is a perennial favorite at Eastern, attracts as many as 16 teams of nine players each, for a total of approximately 150 students.

While this year’s flag football trial is for men only, the idea of co-ed or a separate women’s trial was considered. Granholm said that co-ed flag football was ruled out for safety reasons and because there didn’t seem to be enough interest.

“If 25 girls sign something and say ‘we want to play flag football,’ I’ll put out the sign-ups, get the referees and schedule the games,” he said. “If people are actually going to play it, why not do it?”

Other intramural sports that will be running this spring include both women’s and men’s basketball, co-ed soccer and co-ed volleyball. A men’s and women’s tennis tournament will also be held later in the semester.

Online sign-ups are another new addition to this year’s intramural program. Students who are still interested in signing up for spring sports can visit the intramural website at www.euintramurals.com.

“What’s stopping us from making this a full-blown, all-out, half the student body and faculty involved program?” Granholm said.