Issue date: 9/15/06 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Ryan McCullough Students play intramural flag football on the new athletic fields across Harkrider. Flag football is the first of many intramural sports lined up for the upcoming semester.

There are those of us who like sports, but do not like all the strings attached. For instance, practicing year round, away games, social restrictions, and all the time consumption. There is a solution: intramural sports.

Hendrix offers over 20 different sports, taking place throughout the year. The current sport is flag football. The games consist of 20 minute halves and follow the general rules of normal football. The major exception is each player wears flags, and the opposing teams must pull these flags off in order to "tackle" the player. Generally, with sports, there is some amount of practice involved.

"We know we need to practice," says senior Jay Stravinsky, "but we get lazy. So I guess the answer is, no, we don't practice."

Don't be fooled by lack of practices. As with any sport, there is still a fair amount of competition involved.

"The competition is what I like about it," says senior Neil Bledsoe. "It can get pretty competitive. The past two or three years, Martin has dominated," adds Stravinsky. "But I feel a new leaf is turning, I think the baseball team may dominate this year. Martin had a lot of seniors last year, so they lost some of their main players for this season."

As for their own team, The #1 Stunnas, Bledsoe adds, "I think we will have a pretty good shot, once we get our team together. Some of our better players formed their own team, so now we gotta figure that out."

Being seniors, Bledsoe and Stravinsky are well versed in the field of intramural sports, and they think this year may be different than years past.

"I think the ref's are better," says Bledsoe. "They're more experienced, so I think they'll make better calls, and just call better games in general."

For Stravinsky, this season will play out differently for another reason. "I'm going to try and take a more laid back approach this year. I've usually been kind of a loud-mouth with the officials, mouthing off after calls, " says Stravinsky with a smile, "This year I'm just going out there to have a little fun and play some football."

"The new field's nice too," adds Bledsoe, "Nice and clean."

Games are played in the evenings over on the new field. The games are sure to be interesting, so you should probably go watch.

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