Spotlight on intramurals: A look into Assumption’s intramural scene

Marissa Butler

Staff Writer

Freshman year, I was under the impression that intramural sports were all about having fun and playing a sport with people who are equally as bad as you. I was most definitely wrong. In high school, I played soccer, basketball and varsity softball.

When it came time to sign up for spring semester intramurals, I wanted to try something that I had never done before. I decided on volleyball. The great thing about volleyball was that it required minimal movement (so I thought) and I could get a lot of people together for a big team so everyone who wanted to participate could.

In addition, it just so happened that everyone who wanted to be on my team also had no experience.

After the first meeting that explained all the rules of volleyball, I still had the same mindset. It really didn’t seem that difficult to hit a ball back and forth from one side to the other. In addition, the athletic director stressed that there was no spiking allowed because of the level of skill, or lack thereof.

On the day of the first game, it took us, no exaggeration, four times to get the ball to the other side of the net. I’m talking we were not even close to hitting the net on our side. It was like the beginning of the movie Dodgeball. We were awful. To make matters worse, when we finally got the ball over, we just could not get it back over. The worst part of it all was that we got the ball back so infrequently, that whoever was in the game would stay in for almost an entire half.

That means that people who were exceptionally bad, made it even harder to do well. Once our first game was over, I can’t remember the score, but I can promise that we did not reach 10 either set. I just figured it would take everyone a full game to get the hang of it. Once again, I was wrong.

It turns out, I really wasn’t terrible at volleyball. I definitely messed up more than the average player, but in terms of my team, there were about four of us that could keep a volley going.

What I didn’t know about intramural sports, was how serious people took it. Some of these teams would actually get upset if they missed the ball or if we got a point. It started out that I thought they were crazy, but as it turns out, losing gets really old, really fast, no matter what level of competition you are at. I knew that intramural wasn’t serious, but I also found it extremely frustrating when a couple of games had passed, and we still had not reached above 10 points. I suppose that my mindset probably would have been different if the teams were all even, but that just isn’t how life works.

Although it looks like volleyball does not involve much team effort, it really does. For example, if the ball is heading to the worst player on your team, you better run to step in front of them. And the worst thing about people who weren’t good or didn’t put in any effort, didn’t care that we kept losing.

The only victory that we achieved that year was a forfeited win and making it above 10. Three years later, nothing has changed. In fact, last year our biggest accomplishment was that we almost won a set. Not a game. Just a set. And we still didn’t even do that.

Regardless, even if we lost every game for the next two years, which is more than extremely likely, I would still play for the experience. 

Marissa Butler, a junior, studies Organizational Communications. She is a staff writer for Le Provocateur