Sports Commentary: Brilliant disguise

Pete Paguaga — Sports Editor

Almost every person at Southern, that isn’t on a varsity team, has played intramural sports at one point or another during their time in New Haven.

The best part about intramural sports is that you get to put a team together with all of your friends, play whatever game you sign up for and have a great time.

I’ll be honest; I am very competitive person. I always have been, and sometimes I have gotten too intense over an intramural game. Recently I have realized how ridiculous I used to be and how ridiculous some of you have looked.

I came to this realization about a month ago after injuring myself during an intramural game. I was playing floor hockey, and I was running all alone. My knee and ankle went separate ways and there went my ACL and meniscus (cue the excessive laughter of how embarrassing it is).

After that I still would go and root for my friends and now I go to root on my friends while they play softball. Don’t get me wrong, I would definitely rather be playing along side of them, but it works. I’m not going to lie; I have the best group of friends on this campus and that’s what makes them a great team to go watch.

They have fun.

Win or lose, they’re always joking around with each other, and it doesn’t matter whether they go 0-5 or 5-0. No one gets upset or gets down on one another.

Last week, they played against another team, which I will not name, and it was a great game. My group of friends ended up losing by one run and the game came down to the final at-bat.

But the team that they played against was so competitive it was sad to watch. Not all of them, but most were. At one point, one player threw his hat in disgust after yelling at his “friend” for getting thrown out at home. The whole game they were going back and forth yelling at each other.

At one point there was a confusing call during the game that went against my group of friends’ team. Now they just wanted to know why the call didn’t go our way. While it was being explained to them, the opposing team was yelling at my friends the whole time, telling them that they were wrong.

I’ll tell you this: I would rather play on a team that has fun and loses every game than win every game and yell or be yelled at by my supposed “friends” for doing something wrong.

I guess someone forgot to tell them that intramural sports are supposed to be fun. I know that I, at times, didn’t know that, but now because of my injury I see it. So maybe this injury isn’t all bad? Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.