It’s a big week for sports. I saw an Instagram reel the other day, proclaiming that it was the North American Sports Equinox — the day of the year with the most to offer fans of professional sports. The creator listed off the professional leagues that hosted games on that Monday: “NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and WNBA.” The list wasn’t robust enough for my liking. What about Colorado College Intramural Volleyball, Outdoor Soccer and Flag Football? To fight against this kind of omission in the zeitgeist of “Big Sport,” we bring you yet another installment of our column, The Circuit, where the CC Intramural scene takes precedence over all else. Come with us to Olsen Field, the Auxiliary Gym and Washburn Field, where NBA opening games, WNBA finals, NFL Week 8 and the World Series all fade blissfully into the background.
Soccer
It has begun. It’s playoff season: the time of sitting in class, gazing out the window thinking about Olsen Field, with the shirt finally within reach. But not everyone can bask in the glory. Starting the season with 17 teams, intramural soccer has dropped to the top nine teams as the captains voted for a nine-team, double-elimination bracket, not an all-team single-elimination. We are glad to have ranked high enough to continue in the competition, but we must say we will be sad to see some teams go — especially the Nukes — a freshman team that has embraced the Colorado College culture from day one, wearing flair to every game and just having that “can-do” attitude. We hope to see you in the aux gym for futsal, with the same bacon costume that brought a smile to every team.
This playoff season also brings some new teams filled with familiar faces. Regular season Block 6 futsal champions, the Boonies, were a dominant team of freshman phenoms, who have since split into two teams: Fishmpton Thrashers and abcde FC.
“It’s definitely feeling like it’s going to be an electrically charged game,” said Gabby Marchant ‘27, who was referring to the “Boonies reunion game” that occurred on Tuesday. However, as Fishmpton Thrashers and abdce FC took the field, we couldn’t tell who was who as they all joined into a game of keep-away to warm up.
The game was quick, skillful and smooth, and sophomore Hyunsoo Kim’s voice rang through the field as he yelled at both the referees and his own teammates. Aw, it feels like home. While abcde FC were up first, the game moved into a tie and back with abcde FC on top in the end with a score of 4-2. There were definitely moments of familiar competition, but overall, it was nice to see this team back together, even if it was on opposite halves.
As for the why, Kim, former captain of the Boonies and current captain of abcde FC, declined to comment on the reasoning for the team’s breakup.
Flag Football
The intramural sport we are probably the least well-versed in, flag football, is incredibly popular amongst the men’s lacrosse team. The freshmen, sophomores and seniors all fielded teams this year, with Director of Recreation, Chris Starr, claiming that it will be “an all lacrosse final”. The freshman team, however, is out on a forfeit, leaving the sophomore Doucheflags and the senior Rockets, led by Will Canavan ‘27 and Quinn Gordon ‘27, as our top contenders. And while we as seniors want to root for our friends so dearly out on Washburn, we can’t help but want to see the name Doucheflags proudly displayed on the intramural wall.
Volleyball
The final sport to reach the playoff era is IM volleyball. It’s a sport that, for most of the season, provides a great venue for friend groups, like ours, to assess whether they are a group of uncoordinated dweebs or whether the competitive setting brings out their unforeseen athletic prowess. But at the end of the season, things ramp up, and every point feels increasingly suspenseful. Starr believes that it’s a race between four teams to take home the title. Those teams with the most impressive records going into postseason were the Ballerinas (9-0), the Gaba Goobers (8-1), the Registered Flex Offenders (7-2) and Thicc and Quicc (7-3). But anything can happen in the postseason, and we’re excited to see how this one pans out, despite the fact that our devastating loss yesterday meant the end of our IM Indoor Volleyball careers for life.
Cornhole
“What are you gonna wear for Halloween this year?” Such a silly question. The assumption that Halloween calls for one costume. Hah. In anticipation of hallo-week, we had planned out six costumes. Now, as badly as I’m sure campo would like us to say the date, time and place of the events we are planning to wear each of these costumes, we are here to focus on one: this block’s Second Saturday Halloween Cornhole tournament. The actual cornhole champions will be awarded a coveted T-shirt, but there will also be prizes for best duo costume and solo costume. Starr alluded to this prize being food-related and rhyming with “dipotle”. It’s probably not even worth you trying, though, for the duo costume category, because we’re pretty sure we’ve got that one in the bag.
Last spring’s Second Saturday cornhole tournament gained a lot of traction, so it was the obvious choice to fill in the spot this weekend, after Hamster Ball Soccer didn’t garner as much participation as we’d have liked. Last spring’s champions, Tomas Mrsic ‘29 and Colton Roberts ‘29, members of the Varsity Hockey team, likely won’t be competing due to the fact that they’re in season this time around. While we wish them the best of luck in their series against Minnesota Duluth this weekend, we can’t say that we’ll miss them on Worner Quad.
We know you might be a little pooped from the night before, but what better way to nurse a hangover than putting on your most mobile costume from the Arc and tossing some bags. We can’t wait to see you there.
Campus Golf
Every day in the Adam F. Press Fitness Center brings a new surprise, whether it’s Psych101 students conducting a social experiment in the walkway (congrats to all who picked up the gold card that was “dropped” right in front of you a few weeks ago) or a weird packaged pasta company giving us free samples to hand out. On this particular Tuesday, my shift featured a gym visit from a 2023 alum, Ian Larned, who enjoyed reminiscing on his glory days as an intramural athlete, supervisor and henchman of Andy and Chris. Larned now lives in San Francisco with his former IM teammate. They won flag football together.
Here’s the thing: It’s not unusual for my boss, Andy Obringer, assistant director of recreation, to within a few seconds of encountering me, bring up The Campus Golf Incident. But when he brought it up in the presence of this aforementioned alumni, it was not just for the sake of a good laugh, but a truly life-altering realization: this social hour at the front desk was not my first time meeting Larned. No, this man was the sole witness of the six-iron swing that concussed Nolan Diffley ‘27 and cemented our names in IM history. He is the formerly mysterious figure who made a panicked phone call to Chris Starr and said: “We have a situation at campus golf! Some girl just hit her boyfriend in the head with a golf club!” While this might speak well to his crisis management skills, those who have met Diffley, even while he’s profusely bleeding from the skull, know that it does not bode well for Larned’s gaydar.
Larned had a robust career on the intramural circuit and counted five champion shirts that he’d accumulated over the years. “I started as a ref for basketball, which I highly recommend,” Larned said. “It’s a good job to do at some point because everybody just yells at you and hates you, kind of. I’m more of a people pleaser, so it taught me to have a little more decisiveness and care less about what people think, which is such a challenge, especially in college.”
Larned has brought these life lessons with him into his postgraduate life, as well as some more technical ones from IM softball. Like many New York City CC graduates, Larned has tapped into the Central Park softball scene. “I was definitely way better because I played at CC,” Larned told the Catalyst. “So if you wanna move to New York, you should play softball in college. That’s the only prerequisite.” He left current IM athletes with a few more pieces of sage advice: “Leave it all on the field or wherever you’re playing. And take it easy on the basketball referees because it’s really hard,” and finally, “people should swim in the pool more.”