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The Dartmouth
July 16, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

We Are the (Intramural) Champions

When I heard that The Mirror this week was about sports at Dartmouth, I thought it was some sort of oversight that an article about intramural sports wasn't included on the storyboard. I volunteered to write this thinking that I would find some moderately funny insight into intramural sports and the lives of the athletes that leave it all on the court, field or rink. The problem is, I couldn't think of anything particularly funny about intramural sports. The more I thought about it, I couldn't find anything interesting at all about intramural sports.

On a good day, intramural sports provide an opportunity for camaraderie and bonding. On pretty much every other day, though, they provide a disorganized game at some inconvenient location that blows up my inbox with messages imploring, "Come on guys, we need two more or we have to forfeit. We don't want to forfeit again, so sign up." We certainly do not want to forfeit.

I think of most intramural sports like tossing a Frisbee on the Green. Before you fall over yourself harping on Frisbee players on the Green and try and come to the defense of intramural mixed doubles tennis, there is one main difference: People throwing a Frisbee on the Green readily accept the irrelevance of their hobby. They're not going to come up to me the next day and tell me about this sick catch over a girl trying to eat chicken stir-fry. They are literally too indifferent to find a place where there aren't people sitting, napping and eating to take part in their favorite athletic activity.

So what is it that drives people to partake in these showcases of amateur athletic might? Is there a Lord Stanley's Cup of Leede Arena on Tuesday nights at 11 p.m., a Lombardi Trophy of flag football? Surely, the athletic department sponsors championship rings for the winners of the most competitive divisions. Sadly not. Instead, all intramural champions simply receive identical "Intramural Champion" shirts. Whether you win A-league hockey or C-league hibachi shrimp catching, you get the same shirt. The thing is, you don't even have to play intramural sports to get the shirt. You could literally never set foot near an intramural contest and still get a shirt by doing the "Ironman" and biking, swimming and running the length of the Ironman triathlon over the course of a month. Not in a day or a week, but a month and then you're an intramural champion forever.

The way I see it, there are three categories of intramural sports players. First, there are the former high school varsity athletes looking to recapture their athletic glory days and hoping that a win in B-league softball will take them back to their lax district title days. Intramural sports obviously exist for the benefit of these people. Next are the former or current varsity athletes. These people like to relive their (more recent) athletic glory by knocking some NARPs around the gym for a couple hours each week. The third group is the people who may or may not have ever played sports before it isn't evident when watching. Why they sign up and get destroyed by groups one and two on a weekly basis, we may never know.

I won't totally discount intramural sports because I'll be playing in a tournament this weekend. I'll be going toe-to-toe with other intramural warriors vying for the coveted intramural champion t-shirt. The sport: cornhole. That's right, the sport where you toss beanbags 30 feet into wooden boxes. While I'll be the first to come to the defense of cornhole as a top-five pastime of the American Midwest, and I expect that this tournament will be on roughly the same level of competition as varsity high school lacrosse in northeast Florida, I can't help but chuckle thinking that this is a sanctioned intramural sport. It's like basketball, but you don't have to move, ever. Hopefully I'll be able to overcome all the tough competition and earn my red badge of intramural courage that is not differentiable from anyone else's.

If you ask me, I'll say I won hockey.


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