Intramural sports are highlights in some college experiences. For some, it’s meeting a group of lifelong friends on your last-minute-thrown-together basketball team. For others, it’s winning back-to-back football championships. But a large number of SWOSU students are frustrated with the handling of intramural flag football signups this fall semester.
Intramural American football has a big place in society. In fact, it’s really how football as we know it today came to be. American football began to take form in the late 1800s as an intercollegiate intramural college sport at many Ivy League universities. It began as closer to what we know as rugby, but over time, it developed into what we know as American football today. So if someone says, “It’s just intramurals,” point to this fact.
SWOSU Intramural sports have been a long-standing activity. SWOSU athletics began as an informal athletic association, similar to an intramural league. Fast forward to the 1990s, hearing stories of my Dad dominating sports…until he tore his ACL and MCL from an alley oop. Nowadays, it still exists and is run out of the wellness center, but students are frustrated this season.
The purpose of this article is not to bash those in charge of intramurals. I understand those in charge are extremely busy. However, I hope to shed light on the situation and hopefully provide solutions. The Southwestern aims to provide a voice for students, by students. So I aim to do just that.
Intramural sports are important for the student body. For many students, it is an outlet from the day-to-day stress of being a college student.
“It gives college students an outlet outside of class, and if they have jobs. I personally love it as I’m doing physical activity competitively with my friends,” SWOSU junior Cole Cunningham said.
In 2023, eight teams took part in flag football. In 2024, that number dropped to six. This year, just four teams are signed up. It isn’t a lack of interest that led to the drop.
“I‘m pretty outraged about the whole thing. Every year, our organization looks forward to doing intramurals, and we come to find out that not one of us had been emailed or informed about it at all. I saw not one signup sheet, flyer, or message about it,” Cutter Williamson of Phi Delta Theta said.
It wasn’t just Phi Delt left out. Tau Kappa Epsilon, which has had at least one team for years, couldn’t join.
“Not only speaking for myself, but many guys in the chapter are upset that we aren’t going to be able to play this year. I had only heard about signups because a friend that also plays every year told me about it, but it was already too late. There was no email or post on social media that signups were available,” Carson Day of Tau Kappa Epsilon said.
It isn’t just those who missed signups that are unhappy. Some in the league are unhappy with less competition.
“I think having 4 teams is going to lead to a shorter season, which is unfair to the students that were looking forward to playing some flag football with their friends,” SWOSU junior Luis Corral said. “It’s almost not even worth it if we end up having to play the same teams multiple times, or if we only play the teams once, which would lead to a 2-3 week season.”
In researching this story, I was unsuccessful in finding any sort of advertisement for the season online or on campus. This doesn’t mean they weren’t posted; I just couldn’t find them. Corral also mentioned he never saw anything posted in the wellness center, saying he goes every day.
As I said previously, this is not intended to bash the hard-working folks in the wellness center. I wanted to bring forth solutions to help with this problem.
I believe that, if agreed to by the teams in the league, pushing back the start of the season to allow more teams to join could be a solution that all sides find successful. A later start date is still a reasonable approach, as last year the season kicked off on October 24th. A pushback of simply one week could allow for several more teams to join.
While I find that solution to be the most beneficial, if it is not a plausible solution, I believe more can be done in the future to ensure this does not occur again. Newspapers have served as the bridge between people, clubs, departments, organizations, and the community for a long time. Events, leagues, meetings, news, etc., have been bridges from these groups to the rest of the community.
The Southwestern strives to cover events; however, we certainly are not able to be everywhere and know everything that is going on. I say this as a request to let us serve the school. We are not hard to reach at The Southwestern, and those interested in promoting an event of any sort may contact us via Instagram, Facebook, or our school email: [email protected]. For future intramural seasons, we would love to promote signups to the student body. Beyond intramural sports, this message also goes to other clubs, organizations, departments, and the community.
Intramural sports are important to the student body. In the day-to-day stress of college, these sports are a very healthy thing. Besides the health benefits of getting active and getting away from work, studying, etc., intramural sports are extremely beneficial in community building. In the extremely online world we live in, a chance to meet people face to face is a lost art that can happen thanks to these sports. However, when a fair chance to join these sports is taken away by a lack of communication, these opportunities are taken away from the student body.
From those of us wishing for a larger league, we hope these considerations, or some compromise, could be taken into account.
For any conversation about this article or rebuttals, you may reach out to me, Coy Pope, at [email protected].
