Etown College Intramural Basketball Gets Too Physical
Intramural basketball is supposed to be fun. A way to escape the academic world and just have a good time playing ball with your friends. But at Elizabethtown College the games are getting a little out of hand.
“We play to win,” Matt Diller junior captain of The Soccer Team said. “This is not about fun, it is about coming out here and making sure we finish the season as champions.”
Diller’s thoughts on the game are a little extreme but throughout the league this is a recurring feeling.
“I will do whatever it takes to win this year,” senior Tynan Edwards said. “Last year I finished in second place, and I have heard it all year long from my friends on the first place squad.”
In a game on February 24th Edwards and his team, the Basketball Guys, got into a little bit of a scrum with team YoCo.
“They [team YoCo] were being extremely physical with us,” Edwards said. “They fouled me really hard when I went up for a lay up so when I got up I shoved the guy.”
The two sides were able to break the scuffle up before it went any further.
In a separate incident when The Soccer Team played team YoCo, senior Michael Terry was forced to exit the game early after catching an elbow to the nose, after grabbing a rebound. Terry had a bloody nose to show for his efforts on the boards.
“It hurt for a few days,” Terry said. “It wasn’t done on purpose, just something that happens when two guys are fighting for position down low.”
“When you get to the court and you start warming up, you really start to get into that competitive atmosphere,” Diller said.
Diller’s team, The Soccer Team, is made up of mostly current and former players on the Elizabethtown College men’s soccer team. Being one of the most competitive teams in the country on the soccer field also translates to the hardwood.
“We hate to lose in soccer and in general” Diller said.
Edwards team is made up of a lot of former Etown men’s basketball players.
“A lot of our guys use to play here [Etown],” Edwards said. “They feel the extra pressure to win because they are supposed to be really good a basketball already.”
The Soccer Team and the Basketball Guys teams are currently first and second in the standings. The only loss suffered for The Soccer Team was against the Basketball Guys 62-52.
“A lot of those guys have been talking trash to us since they beat us,” Diller said, “but we’re going to get them in the championship.”
Both teams have a lot of good friends on the other team, which drives the competition to an entirely new level.
“I want to beat them even worse because we are all so tight,” Edwards said.
All the blood, sweat, and tears that are spilled throughout the course of the season are worth it to walk away with the championship T-shirt that reads “2008 Intramural Basketball Champion.”
“It sounds really bad when you think we do all of this for a lousy T-shirt, but, hey, we’re in college and doing laundry one less day because I have this shirt is worth it,” Edwards said.
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