Column by Joanie Barry

Barry is a junior radio-television and secondary education double major and can be reached at [email protected]

Welcome back, Drake athletes! I hope that your winter break has been relaxing because it is time to get back into shape. Intramurals returns this week with competitive basketball. Unfortunately, there are no sports to comment on for this week’s article. Instead, here are a couple of changes to look for at intramurals this semester.

New and Improved Officials

This upcoming basketball season marks the beginning of a new training technique in intramurals. Originally, trainings consisted of a brief slide show presentation and a practical portion. The practical portion consisted of stations led by the supervisors. This year, however, our trainings got super-sized.

Training consisted of two days. The first day was a classroom training day. Everyone, including supervisors, took a rule test to see exactly how much of the rulebook they understood. Next, everyone watched videos to analyze fouls. However, that instant replay will not be helpful in an intramural championship game. Hence, the second day of training.

The practical portion went above and beyond our previous training sessions. Every court had three full games. Every official, even our most experienced and talented officials, had to referee under the scrutiny of the supervisors and juniors supervisors Lisa and Bill. This was an incredible learning opportunity for our officials. Instead of making mistakes or missing calls during an important game, our officials got to stop the clock and discuss their questions.

All together our training session was six hours long, triple the amount of time as our previous trainings. The goal of these intense trainings was to make sure our officials are the best they can be and in return we hope our athletes can appreciate our dedication as well.

New Faces

Before I wrap up this article with a rule reminder for the week, there are two changes to our staff this semester. Jake Wasserman has returned to our supervisor staff this semester after studying abroad. Everyone on staff is happy to have him back with our intramurals family! Another exciting change happened with Keri Budnik graduating this past December. Usually this would be a very sad occasion for the staff, but Keri is not leaving us yet. Instead, Keri has graduated from being a supervisor to an intramurals intern. Keri is now Bill Moorman’s right-hand woman and your go-to-girl for all things intramurals. If you have any intramurals questions, you can email [email protected].

New Rules

Here is your rule reminder for the week. As you all know, no I.D., no play. We are adding a new twist to that rule. This past basketball season, a lot of our nice blue jerseys went missing. (We assume the Bell Center ghosts took them to play pick up basketball late at night.) Nevertheless, we have become cautious with our jerseys this year. This has led us to some changes for check-in time. As always bring your Drake I.D., but now when you take a jersey you will not get your I.D. back until you have handed the scorekeeper your jersey. This new policy will replace the previous method of returning your jersey directly to the hamper. We know this will take more time, but we want to make sure intramurals has good gear for our participants. You don’t want to wear the small, old, wrinkly ones do you? As always stay safe, and play ball!

P.S. – If you find any of our ghost-stolen jerseys, please return them to the Bell Center!