By RYAN SHUMAKER
Sports Editor
Northwestern Oklahoma State’s yearly intramural basketball league kicked off play this week with 12 men’s teams and six women’s teams getting on the court and beginning the battle for a t-shirt.
Always a popular student life activity, intramurals are meant to be a fun way for students to spend a weekday evening while also getting involved in a little friendly competition.
Every team in each of the men’s and women’s divisions will play each other during the regular season.
After the conclusion of the regular season every team will be seeded into a playoff bracket to determine the champion.
Every game is played just lke the collegiate games, 20 minute halves, each player gets five fouls before they foul out and players can sub in and out as many times as they want.
This much organization and scheduling takes alot of time to ensure every night runs smoothly and efficiently.
Assistant intramural director Brody Nichols says that during this intramural season he is looking forward to seeing a lot of good sportsmanship as well as a lot of students having fun.
He along with his intramural referees put in extensive amount of work every week to make sure students have a quality intramural program to participate in. “It takes a lot of effort- scheduling meetings and finding refs to do all this.” Nichols said.
During intramurals one of the most popular jobs is being a referee for all the different sports offered.
Junior Don Holly has been at Northwestern for three years and has been employed as a referee for all three years. Even though he enjoys his job he admits that sometimes players get a little too aggressive and he has to remind them to take it down a notch.
“Being an intramural referee provides a lot of heartache for me,” Holly states. “The students love the intramural sports but they hate the refs.” Even through all the verbal attacks Holly has come back every year to participate in the program.
Games are Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays and all students are welcome to come out and watch the games starting at six o’clock.