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March 21, 2003

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TU's March Madness hits IMs

March Madness has descended upon us. This is college basketball tournament time - when many fill out brackets, place bets and spend countless hours dissecting the minutiae of every team and every second of every game.

Here at Trinity, our outstanding women's team has advanced to the Division III Final Four for the first time ever. But amidst much less fanfare there has been another dramatic, lower profile tournament unfolding on campus: the Wreck League Championship Series.

The Wreck League is the intramural men's recreational league. This "hackers" league is theoretically intended for fun and exercise and is not nearly as competitive as the "point" league, which features Greek and independent teams vying for the overall IM point championship.

The Wreck League was made up of only four teams this year, including the team I play on, "The Administrators," Computer Science (a faculty and student team), and two student teams, the "250 Pounders + or -" and the "Super Tight Funky Bunch." Not exactly a league that inspires awe. But it's fun when we aren't hammering the daylights out of one another.

Over the years there have been a number of employees playing in the Wreck League and at informal "noonball" pick-up games during the week. Faculty members have been rumored to even set their class schedules so as to be free MWF at noon.

We have our own rules to speed things up, such as playing quick games to seven (though at times even those take 45 minutes), and the winning team sometimes has to yield the floor to those in waiting, to name a couple. Every court has its own culture, and we have ours.

Each year at noonball we are joined by a number of students whom we eventually adopt as our own. Several come back to play with us even after they graduate. I like to think they respect us or maybe even like us. Over time they play down to our level as we train them for life's inevitabilities: you can't be young forever.

But you can pretend. We take on the 250 Pounders again this week in the best of three series for all the laundry - the coveted intramural champion t-shirt. In a regular season game, one of their players shared that he was interviewing with me the next day for the RA position. Surprisingly, he had a horrendous shooting night, but at least he should be a fine RA.

Over the years there have been a number of employees playing in the Wreck League and at informal "noonball" pick-up games during the week. Faculty members have been rumored to even set their class schedules so as to be free MWF at noon.

Sure, a small part of me feels like they should win. After all, we had our day once (in our own minds anyway). They even have fans for goodness sakes. For us, our wives just stay home and wish us luck by yelling things like: "You better not complain if you get hurt again!" as the doors slam behind us.

For those of us on staff the challenge is that we keep getting older while the students remain essentially the same age year after year. Indeed, it is not uncommon for a new team's first reaction to us to be laughter, followed by pity. Inevitably, though, as they tug on their shorts, gasping for breath, they learn they are in a dogfight. We commonly overhear their pleas to one another during timeouts: "We can't let these old guys beat us. This is embarrassing."

Regardless of our different ages though, we have something in common. We all want to win. So here's to the Tiger women, "The Administrators," and even the "250 Pounders." Here's to March Madness.

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