IM Sports: “It’s Just So College”

I would definitely say that I’ve had an incredibly full college experience at William and Mary. I’ve been involved and taken opportunities, crammed my schedule and sometimes teetered on the edge of overbooked. I’ve loved it though, and when looking back at college, I know there will be only a tiny tiny number of things about which I’ll say, “I really wish I could have fit that in somewhere before I graduated.”

One of these few things — until Tuesday — was intramural sports.

You know that scene in The Princess Diaries where Mia describes herself as “a synchronized-swimming, yoga-doing, horseback-riding, wall-climbing type girl. My hand-eye coordination is zero,” — remember, that one? Well, that was me growing up. Team sports where people depended on me to pass and/or catch a ball: I don’t think so.

So, based on pure definition, intramural sports is…what’s the phrase for totally opposite of “up my alley?”

However, at William and Mary, IM seems to be a defining feature of your time here. I grabbed coffee with a friend (also a senior) the other night, and we talked about how we would feel incomplete if we graduated without at least giving an IM team a shot. Our quote exactly — “It’s just so college!”

Well, already twice this year I had turned down IM opportunities because I made lame excuses that I was really busy. I was, and am, really busy, but when it’s senior year and you have mere months to fit in everything you want to do, “busy” is a pretty crappy excuse.

So I gave in and played my first official IM flag football game on Tuesday night. The score was 38-0 after the game was called on account of pity (we faced a grad student team who treated the match-up like it was a Bowl game), and I didn’t have a clue what I was doing most of the time, but I HAD A BLAST.

I left the game telling everyone that I would be back every week, and now I’ve been completely converted to an IM sports lover.

It didn’t matter that I didn’t know what I was doing. No one cared. Seriously, I know everyone says that, but really. It’s one hour of running around like it’s recess with people you just enjoy spending time with, one hour of laughing at how attractive it looks when the ref makes you tuck your sweatshirt into your spandex pants, and one hour that makes you stop and remember how important and how “college” it should be to put the busy schedule on pause, run around outside for no real reason, and laugh hysterically at yourself over and over again. 😛