Sidelines and Good Times
College football is a popular sport for CBU men to watch in the fall at their dorms and apartments, since CBU does not have a team of their own. Watching a game from your couch, though, doesn’t quite match the excitement of actually cheering with the other fans. And, then again, being a crazy fan doesn’t even compare to standing on the sidelines as an actual player on the team. Although there is no Lancer football team, every fall intramural flag football arrives with more support and participation than any other sport. As you can probably guess, I am on a team this year, and we have too much fun.
Last Saturday almost every team played one or two games out on the front lawn, which meant that my team had a long day of football. Since you get to choose your name, our captain decided on Bad News Bears with yellow baseball shirts for uniforms. I had missed our first game on Tuesday, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect from our team. I played on a freshman team with my dorm hall last year, and we thought we knew what we were doing up until the first game. I guess I should have picked up on that sooner when the guys decided to draft me for offensive line. My 5’10” 150 lb. frame could not handle the stress of ex-high school football players that rushed at me on every play. Needless to say, my team last year did not win the Fortuna Bowl, but we grew as a dorm hall and had a blast either way.
I had higher hopes for my team this year, and after the first practice I could tell they were a lot more organized and ready to play hard. The front lawn came to life that Saturday morning with teams and refs in matching uniforms, as well as friends cheering and coaching their teams on. Our first game was at 11 a.m. against the Legal Aliens, also known as the international student team. I played soccer my whole life so I kicked off. I That quickly became my role in the team. I played safety as well and blocked passes as they came, but that couldn’t stop the Legal Aliens from jumping ahead in the second half. No one really felt bad about it. In fact, I even left between games buy the yellow baseball shirt. I didn’t need it, but I was psyched to be out there with the guys.
The second game was against Goon Squad, and they definitely had those ex-high school football players that I encountered last year. Although we fell behind much faster, our team’s morale actually peaked in the last three minutes of the second half. We were on offense within yards of our own end zone when our quarterback threw to one of our receivers to complete our first first-down conversion of the day. Our sideline erupted with as much cheering as five benched players could muster up. We laughed our way through the final whistle, and the other team thanked us for a fun game, as well. That’s just how intramural football is supposed to be: a group of students enjoying a great sport together.
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