In a world where the trade of a pair of baseball players is as likely to be on CNN as it is ESPN, intramurals athletics provide even the most sluggish competitor a chance to feel like an All-Star.
Not that sports are the most important thing, but feeling a sense of victory can do a lot for a person's emotion, and most intramural sports are, at the very least, good exercise.
Every game-winning 3-pointer, each three-ball combination in the corner pocket and all the sliding goals in broomball are worth just as much inside the heart as Aaron Boone's walk-off homer in the American League Championship Series last fall, even if it is worth millions less in the old bank account.
More importantly, intramurals provide an opportunity to compete for those less skilled players. Any guy or gal who can jump over a car, hit 60 percent from behind the arc or swat a ping-pong ball as if it were a slow-moving dot in a game of Pong will have no problem advancing to the next level. And they should. There's no sense in scoring 50 points against bad players when you could be dunking on players your own size.
But intramurals are for us slow-plodding, untalented people who can't touch the bottom of a backboard. It's for those hard workers who get rooted for in the movies, yet can't draw a one-person crowd in real life. It's for those who got picked last in grade school football games, who never learned how to properly play a 1-3-1 defense, and who knock down six straight in beer pong, yet couldn't hit a free throw in 80 chances.
If you're good at something, the NCAA and other organizations provide plenty of places to compete. If you're not, there are intramurals.
Just remember that just like you are not the next NBA player, the intramural referees are not highly trained professionals. So try not to give them too much guff for not being All-Pros either.
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Eric Pfahler
