Intramurals: Basketball or Dodgeball?

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December 1, 2009 • Marta Kotz
Filed under High School, Sports

With few sports offered in the winter, a majority of the student body looks forward to playing intramural basketball during these cold months.
For these students, this year’s offering of intramurals may come to be a shock.
Due to the overwhelming popularity of dodgeball during homecoming week, a survey was handed out to students in the lunch lines recently asking which intramural league they would prefer.
“I organized the survey because it was something Dr. Zaspel asked me to do, based on the interest we have during homecoming week of the dodgeball tournament. The idea was to get more people involved as much as possible; it was an idea we were kicking around from last year,” Athletic Director Mark Pollex said. The school administration has decided to switch intramurals from basketball to dodgeball.
“If I went off the decision made by the students through the survey, it was overwhelmingly dodgeball. Because of that strong contingency of those students who still want to play basketball, I don’t want to lose them out; I want to be fair to them too,” Pollex said.
The decision was based primarily off of what the general student body would prefer for intramural sports, and was seen as a way to get a lot more people involved.
There has been an Intercounty Dodgeball League set in place. It includes Watertown, Jefferson and Johnson Creek. The games are set for three Saturdays, December 12, January 23, and February 27, at 7:30 pm. Most of these schools have been involved with this before.
“I know the students really enjoyed basketball, but there’s only a select group of students that like it, and we’d like to open it up to more people if we could. We still haven’t voted out the idea of having both, it’s just a matter of gym space, time, money, and officials,” Pollex said.
Many students, mainly upperclassmen who have played in intramural basketball before, are outraged with the decision.
“I feel that basketball is a more suitable intramural sport for FAHS, primarily because the students who indicated they would prefer dodgeball as an intramural sport are unlikely to participate, simply because of the nature of the voting system; students were asked to vote while standing in the lunch line. It is because of this I advocate students who are interested in intramural basketball, to boycott intramural dodgeball,” Junior Arjun Dhillon said.
For those still wishing to play basketball this winter, a boycott of dodgeball has been requested by certain upperclassmen.
“I am definitely on the side of basketball for intramural sports. Those who actually participate in intramurals, definitely would have voted for basketball. I say preserve the intramurals basketball tradition, and boycott dodgeball!” Junior Brennan Waller said.