April 4, 2024 | SPORTS | By Zeke Lloyd
When it comes to naming an intramural team, there really are no rules. Students often resort to simple puns. In 2019, I Think Therefore I Slam won the Co-ed Basketball League. Frequently, the play on words is not so innocent. You can find The Swingers and Where My Pitches At competing in the current softball season.
Across the vast range of teams competing in the more than 20 IM sports Colorado College has to offer, many don’t make it through a single season.
On rare occasions, teams take on simple titles.
“We were just sitting around, throwing out random things, and then Drew said ‘What if we were called Balls?’” said Esther Cornish ‘24, team captain of the Ice Broomball team Balls.
Despite the unassuming name, Balls recently achieved a rare intramural feat: three league championships in three consecutive years.
The team’s composition hasn’t changed much in the last few years. The elite squad formed when two IM Hockey teams merged in 2021. The group of then-sophomores chose to play several sports for the duration of the academic year. One of their most anticipated seasons: Ice Broomball.
“After the first three games, we were like ‘This is our sport.’”
The team faced little resistance in securing the championship in the 2021-2022 season. Some of this success might be attributed to the time and place – in the midst of COVID-era policies, IM sports themselves were still gaining traction. Cornish herself was quarantined at the time of the final game that season.
“It was really tough. I did cry,” said Cornish. “But then it became a reality that we were good and we could win this.”
As the next season rolled around, Balls was primed for another championship. It marked a major shift in the team’s mentality.
“It started as, not a random win, but like, ‘Oh, we’re winning. This is fun,’” said Cornish. “And then it kind of became, ‘we need to win.’”
Upon returning to the ice in their junior-year season, they discovered a new game. According to Cornish, “it’s become a lot more aggressive.” Balls were forced to hold their ground. This change came with more attention to roughness from the referees. Cornish didn’t offer much opposition to the game’s evolution.
“People want it more, and we should develop the sport to be a more competitive, sought-after IM.”
But for the team’s other captain, Adley Vogel ‘24, the game’s physical demands add a layer of complexity to his participation.
“For two years running, I was on crutches on the ice. Not playing, just supporting people,” said Vogel. “Because it was that important to me.” At a paper plate awards ceremony last year, Cornish awarded Vogel “Team Mom.”
Vogel’s continued attendance in an injured state fit well into the team’s operational dynamic.
“Some IM teams, I’ve noticed, have a bad tendency. When they start to lose, they only play certain people. When it gets down to it, one of their starters plays wherever,” said Vogel. “We play everyone all the time.”
Vogel’s rationale: “At the end of the day, it’s not that serious.” Neither Cornish nor Vogel assigned much credit to individual players. Instead, Balls’ story of unprecedented success is not rooted in regimented training, or a few select athletes.
“Most of it comes down to positive reinforcement during the games. Our bench is always talking. We’re always cheering each other on,” said Vogel. That unwavering platonic commitment extended beyond the ice as well.
“There were certain people that I would only see while playing broomball, basically. And that’s not by choice. It’s just kind of the way that our lives sync up,” said Vogel. “But whenever we played broomball, they’re my closest friends.”
The team would often hold dry pre-games before they played. Schedules didn’t always allow for it, though. Cornish remembers squeezing in a game between track practice and lift. The little sacrifices added up, and missed games were rare.
“I feel really grateful, though, to have had a team like that. Every single person,” said Vogel. “I’m stoked to see them. If even one person was missing, we all noticed.”
Fortunately for next year’s broomball competitors, Balls will not be a part of the league. The team anticipates a reunion in the years to come. “We’ve talked about reuniting once a year to play a game of pickup broomball on a pond or something,” said Cornish.
More significant than the group’s future, though, is a shared history.
The senior class is flush with stories of COVID-bubble fallouts and failed relationships. “With our first few years, especially our class coming in with COVID, we all created these strong friendships at the beginning,” said Cornish. “And maybe they weren’t quite right.”
But despite the horror stories permeating the senior class, Balls embodies a counternarrative, although not uncommon, social phenomenon. “That was our thing sophomore year,” said Cornish. “And it’s really heartwarming to know that people still wanted it to be their thing, with our exact members, their senior year.”