UC Davis Intra-Mural Sports

IM sports have made my college experience that much more amazing.
If you come to Davis, please do take advantage of it!!! You won’t regret it.
I’ve done flag football, inner tube water polo, outdoor soccer, floor hockey, ultimate frisbee, and basketball.
Most of them cost $ 50 to create a team. Split the price among your friends for it to be very affordable!
Keep in mind that although intramural sports are for recreational fun, everyone is SUPER competitive. It becomes really serious, but don’t forget to have fun.
My favorites were definitely innertube water polo, floor hockey, and flag football. Even though we lost many games for water polo, it was still so much fun.
Make sure after a game to shake hands with the opposing team. Good sportsmanship ftw!
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

I was sold on going to Davis by one major feature: the seeming kick-​assery of its Intramural sports program. None of the other schools that I visited displayed the grandeur of their IM sports program in a great wall of fame spanning one of the busiest corridors on campus. As my guide pointed out, champions from each IM sport every quarter get to have their picture displayed on the wall for a year. I was astounded. An altar for the most athletic individuals in school? No way! As a multi-​athletic kind of guy I thought this was awesome and something that I would love to take part in during my collegiate career. I made an oath to myself, that if I ever got into Davis, I would make it my priority to get on that wall.
Four years and 30 IM sports teams later, I was out of luck. Each quarter, with the exception of one in which I studied abroad, I played on an average of three-​four teams a quarter, with seven this Spring quarter. All the teams that I have played on were very competitive and I have made it to the playoffs and championship game in a majority of the sports. Yet, I have always lost. Sometimes the lost came from a bad referee call (a goalie sliding to get a loose ball does NOT warrant a penalty kick!). Other times, we lost fair and square to a better team with a reasonable majority of appropriate level individuals. However, in this art of losing I have gained a few insights that I would like to share with those, whom like me, love IM sports and have dreamt of getting on that wall.
1. Don’t expect to win if you are not on a team of selectively handcrafted individuals. Yeah, there might be a few cases of that true «Dodgeball-​esque» underdog story, but I’d say 95% of B or A level teams on that wall were handpicked or recruited to play on the team either by a captain, or highly experienced group of athletes. This shit is like the real world. There are winners, and there are losers, and the winners seem to stick together and dominate. This also ties into my second point:
2. B level champions should be playing in A league. I honestly think that aside from watching each team to ensure that the correct level athletes are playing on the appropriate team, the IM sport program is doing everything they can to ensure that this doesn’t happen. However, if you look at ANY championship team and apply the definition from the IM sports website of the B level being «designed for average skilled, competitive individuals,» it is merely laughable at best. I have nothing against being a strong B team, but if your team is filled with former high school stars, club athletes past the 2 year grace period, and guys that were cut from the NCAA team freshman year, please move up to A.
3. Screw the Oldies. Just kidding, they are a group of highly talented old people with enough muscle memory stored in their respective sports to win. Which they do. I will probably turn into them when I am like 40. Even though it does smell fishy that Ben Dao, the IM sports coordinator head honcho is usually affiliated with their team…
4. Don’t take it out on the ref. I’m looking at you Men’s B soccer. Yes, refs have been known to make terrible calls (I have lost a few games because of them), and yes Men’s B soccer is the closest thing to hand-​to-​hand– war in the modern era, but give the refs a break. They are getting paid crap to stand there in the cold or heat with the probable midterm looming over them for the next day. I’ve seen it get to the point where any play that didn’t go the team’s way turned into a screaming match at the ref. Unclassy.
Nonetheless, like an old dog that pisses on your carpet, runs into the lamp, and eats your slippers, I still love the IM sports program for all that it is worth. I cannot imagine my college career without getting tickets from biking back from an 8pm soccer game without a headlight, the multitude of girls that I have accidentally taken down during Co-​rec games, and avoiding my captain during the last few games of the season to avoid paying $ 5 team dues. All-​in-​all I had a great time.