Written By: Ireland Owens, Writer
Recently, students at Austin College began playing in the Intramural Basketball League, an exciting new sporting event. Students registered to play on basketball teams at the Sid Rich Gymnasium’s basketball courts.
This isn’t the first intramural sport at AC: There have been several intramural sporting events on campus this Fall semester including the intramural football games at Jerry Apple Stadium which wrapped up in mid-October.
Various IM basketball teams, such as Flint Tropics, Sprained Ankles, PKO, KACHOW, Team Takeover and The Dudes all faced off on day one for the first matches of IM basketball. On day two, the games got more intense as one team, called Quack Addicts, gained their first win against the team The Ball Handlers.
I spoke with Nicholas Estes, who is the Student Director for intramural sports here at Austin College. “IM basketball enrollment has increased by about 50% from 2021. For each of our first two nights of games, there were around 150 students in the gym– players, spectators, referees, photographers, coaches, you name it. It’s an incredible atmosphere in Sid Rich on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and we’re all having the time of our lives with it,” Nicholas said.
Commenting on the use of social media to promote the IM sports at AC, Nick explained that “… we’ve really been able to leverage social media and word-of-mouth tactics to drive engagement. From what I’ve seen, AC is more fired up about intramural sports than ever before, and that can largely be attributed to student-driven buzz on campus. We’ve tried to make IM sports extremely accessible, visible, and above all, fun.”
Nick also spoke to me about the support that Intramural sports have received this year. According to Nicholas, David Norman, the athletic director at Austin College, as well as President Steven O’Day, have been “… so supportive of the program and have really enabled all the strides that we’ve made in 2022”.
Intramural basketball plays on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If you are interested in learning more about IM basketball or want to get involved in intramural sports at Austin College, go check out the AC intramurals Instagram account @roo.intramurals for more information.
