My first experience with intramural sports
I should probably start by stating one key fact: I suck at team sports. In elementary school gym classes, my teammates knew to keep their distance or risk sustaining considerable injuries. In high school, my grade in Phys Ed. was embarrassingly low. I have no understanding of strategy, I can’t throw to save my life, and I still maintain the core belief that if a ball is flying towards me, the smartest thing to do is duck. Somehow, despite all of this, I decided at the beginning of the semester that joining an intramural sport sounded like an amazing idea… and it turned out that I was right!
While sports have not generally been known to fill me with any degree of confidence or excitement, I am of the opinion that just about anything that involves water has the potential to be fun. I suppose this is what drew me to innertube water polo.
Being a first year, I have taken quite a lot of tours in the past few months. On one such tour we happened to make a stop at the fitness centre — at which point our tour guide began to tell the group about intramural sports. The guide explained that there was such a thing as a ‘fun league’ of intramurals. As the name might suggest, the entire purpose of this league is to have fun — not a terrible concept at all. Then the guide proceeded to list off some of the popular teams that existed. I am sure this list was very long, but all I heard was innertube water polo. As soon as these words met my ears, my head was filled with images of a bunch of people in oversized kids’ floaties, paddling around a pool like idiots. I immediately thought to myself: I too could be one of those idiots.
So I paid my 10-dollar fee and joined the Piranhas — a team composed of four people. My first game arrived on an extremely rainy Sunday, which was admittedly not a very encouraging omen. As great as this idea had sounded upon conception, I couldn’t help but be a little bit nervous.
“I’ve had to do plenty of new things since starting university,” I thought, “why on Earth do I need to choose to expose myself to more? I don’t even know how to find the pool!”
Despite my doubts, I ended up on the pool deck (early) and surrounded by a group of equally confused and inexperienced students. The thing is, a fun league is a particularly wonderful environment because everyone really is there just to have fun. No one else had any idea what they were doing, and no one really seemed to be concerned by this fact. We all swiftly discovered that the game was a lot harder than we had expected. Turns out that when your butt is stuck in a flotation device, you have to rely pretty heavily on your arms, which is a lot of work.
Rather than diminish our efforts, however, our apparent lack of abilities encouraged us to make up for what we lacked in skill with enthusiasm. I don’t know if we were competing to win the game, or if the competition revolved around who could look the most ridiculous. If it was in fact the latter, I’m pretty sure that I won. The pool was a flurry of splashes, limbs, and shouted apologies as we muddled our way back and forth between opposing nets.
When I talk to friends about the extracurriculars that they have joined in the past month, most of them tell me about activities that will help them ‘gain experiences’ or ‘develop skills’ for something-or-other. I commend my friends for their practicality, but I have to say that I think I’m gaining just as much as I flail through the water. Never underestimate the importance of being ridiculous every once in a while — it’s a skill that is not practised nearly often enough.
Illustration by Hannah Stewart