Although the Truman State football team’s 2015 season is well underway, there are plenty of non-varsity football athletes ready and eager to compete against one another within the walls of our institution.
Intramural director John Manning says several intramural flag football leagues began shortly after fall classes started, and several of the other leagues began earlier this week, including sand volleyball and outdoor basketball.
Manning says intramural flag football has seven different divisions hosting nearly 40 teams, and all games are played at the field behind Centennial Hall.
Manning says he thinks flag football, and intramurals in general, serve as an important outlet for stress relief and participating in intramurals is something the average Truman student needs.
“Intramurals give students an opportunity to get out and work off some stress,” Manning says. “I think IMs provide students a competitive environment — especially students who don’t necessarily have the time or ability to play on a University team.”
Although this is Manning’s first year as intramural director, he says the setup and protocol for flag football remain largely unchanged. Manning says the system has been established and is effective, so there is no need to fix it.
All seven divisions follow the same format. As in previous years, flag football consists of three to five regular season games. After the games are completed, teams will be seeded in accordance with those results for a single-elimination postseason tournament. Manning says the biggest change this year will be further implementation of the head-mounted cameras used by an arbitrary official for each game. Manning says the cameras are used for reviews, mostly during meetings after the game.
“We like the GoPros — we want to be the best officials we can be,” Manning says. “The better officials you have, the better the game will be, and the more friendly we can keep it.”
Manning says he thinks intramurals are an ideal crossroad between leisure and competition.
“A major point for intramurals is for students to compete with their friends and against their friends,” Manning says. “With our size of campus, around 6,000 students, you tend to know a lot of the people you compete against. It gives our kids an avenue to go out and participate, even if they’re not in an organization, even if it’s just a group of friends with no affiliation at all. We want everyone who wants to play.”
New intramural sports are being added almost weekly to imleagues.com, Manning says. He said even if students have missed their opportunity to participate in flag football, there are plenty of opportunities to compete in a broad assortment of intramural activities during the course of the school year.
To learn more about flag football at Truman, read the rest on Issuu.
