Are you an ex-high school-student-athlete? Don’t know what to do with that competitive energy but don’t want to play a varsity sport? Someone who’s new to sports and doesn’t want to commit too much time? Look no further than collegiate intramural sports!
Intramural sports are the lovely in between of PE competitions and a real sports atmosphere that satisfy that urge to play on a random weeknight. On a serious note, they’re a fun and creative way to exercise a bit and make some friends. At the 5 colleges, we have two sports teams: CMS and PP. CMS included Scripps College, Claremont McKenna College, and Harvey Mudd college (leaving Pomona-Pitzer together). This means that besides having our varsity sports teams include the three schools, we get to have intramural sports with CMC and Harvey Mudd students.
Intramural sports are organized out of the CMS athletic center: Roberts Pavillion (aka CMC’s gym). Operating on a trimester system, there’s a host of sports you can choose to play. In the fall theirs options like soccer, pickle ball, tennis, and even intertube waterpolo (a fan favorite). In the winter we offer spikeball, basketball, and the best sport of all—dodgeball. In the spring there’s sand volley ball and cornhole and more. Anyone from CMC, Mudd, or Scripps can get a friend or group of friends together to form a team, and then the coordinators create brackets that work with your team’s schedule to play weekly games for a trimester. For example, my dodgeball team last year competed on Thursdays from 7-9pm (we’d play for a 40 minute interval sometime in that two hour bracket). This year we’re playing Mondays in the 9-11pm bracket. Every week we rally and play against formidable foes, laugh because we’re adults playing dodgeball, and then do it all again the next week. It’s super fun, and I’m glad Scripps/CMS has programs like this to be able to play around and destress a bit amidst the frenzy of the semester while creating a fun community to be apart of. My favorite memory is definitely playing and making it to the dodgeball semifinals last semester, and after a valiant effort but eventual loss, my friends and I celebrated with In-N-Out.
If you’re looking for a low commitment way to meet friends, you can join teams that need more players or ask some people from class that you want to get to know. It’s silly, and the referees make it fun, so there’s no downside to trying it out; I highly recommend! If you don’t want to play, you can always show up to cheer on your friends or join even an intramural Trivia team for some factual fun.