The fall semester championships for the Intramural Sports program came to a close this month with competitions in flag football, soccer, volleyball and dodgeball.
Enrolled students and alumni who have a current membership with the Pennington Student Activity Center and participated in Southeastern’s Intramural Sports Program during the fall might consider signing up for the program’s spring semester. Sports available in the spring are basketball, softball and indoor soccer. Each person who joins intramural sports has to pay a $10 fee. Leagues are created for each team, and a schedule is derived from the teams in the league.
“Recreational Sports and Wellness and IM sports has a goal to provide something fun for everyone in everything that we do while focusing on quality programs and events that influence participation and generate an atmosphere of participation rather than winning,” said Chad Pendarvis, assistant director of Intramural sports and special programs. “At the end of the season, we do a championship-style playoff. The team that wins the championship may advance to compete in the State Tournament that rotates being hosted by other schools around the state.”
The winners of the intramural sports championships for volleyball were the Sloppy Sets for co-rec and Ohh Killen for women’s volleyball. For the indoor soccer championships, the winner of men’s soccer was CAN, and the winner for co-rec was the Ball Busters. The flag football championships were played in Strawberry Stadium on Nov. 11. The co-rec flag football winner was the Wreckin’ Balls. For women’s flag football, Alpha Sigma Tau defeated Alpha Omicron Pi. In Greek men’s football, Kappa Alpha defeated Theta Xi, and in men’s flag football, the Doughboys defeated the Lugnuts.
Next week, the teams that won the championship will go to Lake Charles to play the State Tournament at McNeese.
“We have state next weekend. We have to win that,” said Byron Weber, a senior in sports management and the captain of the Doughboys. “Then we go to Mississippi for regionals, Dec. 6 through Dec. 8. After that we have the national tournament in January, which is already paid for because we won the regional tournament in Arkansas.”
The regional tournament took place during Homecoming week, and the Doughboys defeated Texas State 33 to 23. Weber was indifferent towards the state tournament coming up, mainly because he had been there several times before.
“This will be my fourth time going to state, and [the Doughboys are] a heavy favorite to win it, so I’m not really nervous or anything,” said Weber. “It does not bother me. I really like to go for the other people, for my teammates, the ones that have never been before. You know, just to show them the different competition levels that you’ll see out there.”
The team does not typically practice outside of the games, but the players generally have prior experience in football before joining the flag football team.
“I’m not going to say they’re skilled at flag football because flag football is different from regular football, but they’re skilled in football. It takes them at least a season to really get acclimated to playing flag football and get out of the tackle aspect of football.”
Weber joined the intramural sports team after sustaining an injury in high school. He stated that many of the people who join the intramural sports program could not or did not join in collegiate sports due to injuries, grades or other issues, but still wanted to play sports for recreation or fitness.
“I had torn my ACL in high school, so I wasn’t able to play collegiate sports,” said Weber. “One of my friends asked me if I want to join their team back in 2007 I think. I was just like ‘yeah,’ and now I play. It just started from there.”
The program went on to leave a positive impression on Weber, and although he is graduating this semester, he hopes that the legacy of the Doughboys will be carried on in the future.
 “I love [intramural sports]. It gives you something to do after school. It’s very big. We have basketball and softball coming up in the spring. We’re hoping to have a big turnout, but we usually have a nice amount of teams, like big teams. It’s so you stay out of trouble, you know, after you have a big test or something, you come and relieve some stress. You play ball.”