“I want to take an easy class during eighth block.” It’s a tale as old as time. Whether your graduation requirements have made allowances for you or not, we completely understand the desire to take it easy for the last month of school… as long as you have the right intentions, of course. Senior calendar, Llamapalooza, sunny days on the quad and move out? Wrong! These surely aren’t legitimate excuses. Block 8 soccer on Olson Field, Tutt Science softball and Second Sundays Grass Volleyball Tournament: Now these are the real reasons why any self-respecting student (intramural) athlete has been anticipating the final block of the year.
Welcome back to The Circuit! We can’t wait to end the year off right with some more in-depth reporting on the intramural happenings from this block. But first, we owe it to our 7th block intramural champions to highlight their accomplishments in Schlessman Natatorium.
Inner Tube Water Polo
On Friday, March 10, the D3 Soakers, led by captain Willa McLaughlin ‘27, went into the final game with cautious optimism. Their opponents, Cache La Cooter, had also been successful in the inner tube water polo season leading up to this point.
“We knew [they] would be a big competitor, and we were worried,” Olivia Harris, a junior on D3 Soakers, told The Catalyst. “We had been hearing rumors about this team and I think they have been hearing rumors about us maybe. There was a pretty strong rivalry entering the pool on that last day.”
There was a lot at stake for both teams, but for many players on the Soakers, this win would mean continuing a winning streak from last year, when they played as “Shagsketball” alongside players from the class of 2025.
“Our team had a lot of energy—a lot of bench energy—and just overall team camaraderie was high,” said Avery Johnson ‘26. Her and the rest of the Soakers attribute much of their success to this energy that fueled them through the final whistle, when they came out with the lead and took home the ultimate prize.
“It’s honestly been the greatest joy of my college experience, winning back-to-back championships. And we fought hard,” said Johnson. “We came together as a team and our defense really excelled and we put the ball in the basket.”
In a rare course of events, the winners didn’t just bring home a t-shirt as a marker of their win.
“They let us take our inner tubes home,” said Harris. “Rumor has it that they’re really hard to deflate and blow up, so they just buy new ones every year, but that’s unconfirmed.”
If the rumors are true and the tubes are bought new every year, that more or less sets them apart from the intramural t-shirts, which are the same in iconic pattern and color scheme year after year. For the Soakers, this represents a missed opportunity to demonstrate their two-time winningness.
“I kind of want a different color,” said McLaughlin. “I’m hoping Chris would do white.”
Nonetheless, the classic black-and-yellow line of intramural champion shirts wasted no time in fostering the recognition that the Soakers deserved on the day of their win.
“It was an Admitted Students Day, and the Josh and John truck was there,” recounted Harris. “We were wondering if it was free—it was not—but an admitted students’ dad saw that we were wearing the inner tube water polo champion shirts and he said, ‘Oh my god, you are the champions?’ and he bought us all ice cream.”
Congrats to the D3 Soakers on a sweet victory.
Dodgeball
To continue our Block 7 celebrations we must highlight the sophomore, well let’s be honest freshman, dodgeball team Six Seven Rizz. An intramural sport that has significantly struggled over the past couple of years in participation, attendance and injury, this year was no exception.
“You know, the season started off bleak,” said Rizz player Malcolm Stewart ‘28, “We had a team consisting of some friends and some swimmers. And then every single one of the swimmers got sick so we didn’t have a team anymore.”
As the second week of gameplay was underway, Rizz captain Ellie Schifman ‘28, was scrambling for players.
“My team captain, Ellie, resorted to her general manager capabilities and recruited six freshman hockey players for our team,” stated Stewart.
The hockey team is notorious around the aux gym, as their dodgeball shots have been compared to gun shots beating off the walls according to Chris Starr. However, this year they decided not to organize a team. “[Last year] we lost in the championship, so we couldn’t go back,” said Riley Stuart ‘27. But we guess that wasn’t true for the freshman on campus who didn’t experience that blow.
According to the dodgeball supervisor Grant Thompson ‘26, there is some flexibility within dodgeball of roster changes especially due to inconsistency with the sports attendance. They allowed changes up until second Wednesday, and Rizz added their players just in the nick of time. By second Thursday they saw their path to the championship and on fourth Monday, Six Seven Rizz walked away with the win.
Broomball
Some people could never fathom waking up at noon on a Sunday after one of, if not THE most active Saturday yet, to trek to Ed Robson. But that’s certainly not the case for Sina Fallahi ‘28. Captain and star player of intramural broomball winning team “Broomsack,” Fallahi has had this day on his calendar for a whole week.
The 2026 broomball season was pushed to Block 7 and Block 8 as Chris Starr aimed to pursue acceptable ice times. But as teams now struggled with being on the ice on a sunny afternoon- they were also hit with a scandal.
After gameplay on April 2, white power footprints were found leading into and off the ice- specifically around broomball games. This led to concerns of cheating by use of chalk on shoes to mitigate slipping as well as harm to the ice. The prints appeared again on April 9 with still no identified perpetrator and the season was at risk of full cancellation with no crowned champion.
“The footprint incident that was pretty weird we were all pretty bummed we might’ve gotten cut short of a season,” said Fallahi.
Luckily there was no cheating or chalk, as the prints were eventually confirmed to have appeared from an assumed accumulation of ice and concrete. This allowed the season to go on and Broomsack to finish their 15-0 undefeated season.
“We were probably gonna win no matter what,” said a beaming Fallahi, who had put together a team of champions. “We have a lot of really strong athletes so far as broomball goes… there was a lot of passion, effort and background in hockey.” A team consisting of both men’s and women’s club hockey players, this was a team experienced with sticks.
Fallahi shouted out Ryan Brush ‘26 and Hannah Choe ‘26, both captains of their hockey teams, as his stars and personal MVPs. So from us to you, we say good luck in your post-grad adventures and Broomball careers.
As Broomsack flew through the playoffs on Sunday they were not only led by Fallahi’s leadership but his pure, natural broomball talent, something that can’t be said about everyone who touches the ice. So without further ado, we announce Sina Fallahi as your third Circuit athlete of the week!
In our first edition we alluded to more shirts incoming. Let’s just say there’s a new ice broomball champion shirt somewhere in our apartment…
Soccer
It’s not discussed enough: This is a soccer school. From the varsity teams, to the club teams, to the six Blocks of intramural soccer (yes, we’re counting futsal), this fact is blatantly obvious. So after experiencing major withdrawals from a soccer-less Block 7, it’s no surprise that we’ve managed to squeeze in another block of soccer in the Block 8 tournament.
The sun is out, Alan Jackson is on the speaker and teams stumble down Preserve Hill eager to kick around the ball. This year’s tournament has been organized like this: every team is put into a pool of around three-four other teams and plays round robin within that pool. Then the top two of each pool go to the playoffs as well as two wild card teams from the whole tournament.
Fall outdoor champs, Bozo, have not returned to competition but based on stats, the freshman phenom futsal winners Boonies are already on top. Will they continue their footy domination? Or will a veteran team come back and claim the title? While some might see that as a biased question, others might sense some subtle foreshadowing.
Softball
It may not be as big of an upgrade as Tava Quad to Olson field for Block 8 soccer, but the transition to playing games on the Tutt Science circle definitely represents a shift in energy in the softball season. At the very least, its circular shape more closely resembles a baseball field than the tree-ridden Armstrong quad. The six teams that remain in the competition have had a chance to refine their skills and batting orders, with some of them seeming unrecognizable from the version of themselves that first stepped up to plate in Block 7.
One such team is Step Siblings, a roster of primarily basketball players, who were famously mercy ruled by Three Strokes, the “Mathy skaters” team, early on in the season. Now, Step Siblings is taking their opponents into full seven-inning games and winning them. Despite some forfeits due to lack of player turnout, they have upped themselves to a .500 record, tied with Sand Jobs, yet still lagging behind the league’s leaders, Master Batters (.833) and Big Sticks (1.000).
An anonymous source familiar with the matter noticed how a questionable strategy employed by Step Siblings could possibly be responsible for their newfound success.
“Somehow when they were losing their batting order shrunk quite a bit,” the source told The Catalyst.
The rules for intramural softball clearly stipulate that everyone who plays on the field must be included in the batting order, and that order must be followed and include at least two of the underrepresented gender. This is to ensure that a team can’t win by rotating through their best hitters to leave the other team scrambling to keep them below a mercy rule.
With an absence of batting cages on campus, the only way for sub-par hitters to get better is to get those reps in during the game. Anyone can hit a walk-off home run if you just believe in them.
Second Saturday and Kicks for CASA
Was anyone else disappointed when they replaced the volleyball scene in Top Gun with a flag football scene in the second movie? There’s really just something irreplaceable about a good old game of volleyball in the sun. Thankfully, this weekend brings a chance for you to scratch that volleyball itch. It’s the beloved Second Saturdays series, but with a twist, because this one’s on Sunday. Rumor has it that the tournament was moved due to Kappa Alpha Theta’s Kicks for CASA happening on Saturday (shameless plug: SIGN UP), but it’s probably best that teams have an extra day to practice in any case. This final tournament of the year has a habit of bringing out the best in club, varsity, and recreational volleyball players alike.