Chandler Gymnasium on Monday evening felt unlike anywhere else on campus. Competing students, staff, faculty, and their spectators came together to conclude a classic Winter Study tradition: Intramural (IM) basketball.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This year, Monday\u2019s championship games tipped off following a massive snowstorm. Despite the blizzard, students and faculty packed into Chandler Gymnasium to watch the season\u2019s final matchups.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The women\u2019s league championship kicked off the night. In the two years since its inception, the league has rapidly gained popularity, generating 10 teams in this year\u2019s tournament, Assistant Director of Club Sports and Intramurals Kris Hoey said. Fans of the league packed into the stands on Monday expecting a close championship game \u2014 and they got one.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The defending champions, Steal the Moon, consisted of members of women\u2019s soccer. Recognized for their minion uniforms, paying homage to the hit movie series Despicable Me, the group returned to IM basketball because of its playful atmosphere.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s stress-free, and it\u2019s just fun and funny,\u201d said Steal The Moon Captain Elle Long \u201928. \u201cIt\u2019s that childhood feeling of playing a sport for complete fun.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Paula\u2019s Princesses, composed of members of the women\u2019s crew team, faced Steal the Moon in the league championship game. The team is named for women\u2019s crew Head Coach Paula Thoms, according to Caroline Ripsteen \u201929. The game was tightly contested, with back-and-forth leads and relentless defense on both ends of the floor.<\/p>\n
Long and Maya Lloyd \u201929 repeatedly fired threes from downtown for Steal the Moon, cutting through the court with quick drives. Tessa Chomsky \u201929 ran the offense with smooth crossovers and sharp ball handling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Paula\u2019s Princesses, Ellie Davis \u201926 anchored the defense and knocked down clutch free throws, while Ripsteen drove to the basket to finish with aggressive layups. In the end, Paula\u2019s Princesses claimed the women\u2019s league IM champion title in a hard-fought, 12-11 victory.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve gotten a lot better during the course of Winter Study,\u201d Paula\u2019s Princesses coach and men\u2019s basketball guard Ben McGraw \u201926 said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a lot of fun, and [I\u2019m] proud that it worked out today.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
For some members of Paula\u2019s Princesses, IM basketball was a tradition they were excited for long before Winter Study began. \u201cThis was something that was \u2026 hyped up in our summer email chain, so I was beyond excited to join,\u201d Ripsteen said. \u201cIt\u2019s such a great [addition] to [the crew] team culture to get this time together where we\u2019re not formally training on the water.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The open league championship followed. Starting with 20 teams, both of the league\u2019s semifinals went into overtime. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The final pitted youth against experience. Old But Cold, a team of assistant coaches, professors, and staff members, faced off against Business Handlers, a group of students.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Old But Cold leaned on the familiarity that they built playing outside of the tournament. \u201cWe play together all the time,\u201d Ryan Behan, men\u2019s basketball assistant coach and captain of Old But Cold, said.<\/p>\n
Business Handlers maintained a similar lightheartedness, according to captain Harlan Warnsman \u201927. \u201cMy team is just a bunch of good friends who love basketball,\u201d he said. \u201cWe play with heart and have a lot of fun playing together.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Defensive pressure from Trey Livingston, an assistant coach for the men\u2019s basketball team, combined with Behan\u2019s aggressive drives and quick handles, kept the young Business Handlers on their heels. Old But Cold rode that momentum to clinch the open league championship with a 28-22 victory.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Livingston said the win carried extra significance. \u201cIt means a lot to us,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople would doubt [us] just because we\u2019re older. But \u2026 we had to come out and show them what we were about.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He described the team in one word: relentless.\u00a0 \u201cWe lost to [Business Handlers] in the regular season, so [this was the] get-back for the championship,\u201d Livingston said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Behan put it simply. \u201cOld But Cold: It\u2019s self-explanatory,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Above all, players said they valued how IM basketball brought the community together. \u201cI\u2019m going to miss just hooping with these guys every other night,\u201d Behan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIM basketball can honestly be the best part of your day,\u201d Owen McHugh \u201927, captain of Flight School, an open league team that made it to the semi-final game, said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Hoey, moments like these capture the core of intramural sports. \u201cI\u2019m just excited to keep things rolling [and] provide opportunities for students to come and exercise, socialize, be together, be on a team, enjoy themselves, and laugh,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s note: Ellie Davis\u00a0 and Ben Niewoehner, Record management and contestants in the championship games, were not involved in the writing or editing of this article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chandler Gymnasium on Monday evening felt unlike anywhere else on campus. Competing students, staff, faculty, and their spectators…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-442775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}