For students who are not members of the Lions football team, but are still looking to throw the pigskin, finding a place to play is now easier as intramural flag football at Texas A&M University – Commerce officially kicked off Monday, Sept. 17.
At the end of the registration period, a total of 32 teams had signed up, including 22 men’s teams, 5 women’s teams and 5 co-ed teams. Last year there were 30 teams with 323 male participants and 131 female participants. The final number of players for this year won’t be determined until the playoffs begin due to late additions.
“Flag football’s great for students getting out on the campus and meeting each other,” Mike Chadee, assistant director of intramural and club sports at the Morris Recreation Center, said. “It’s a great tool for retention of students [as it] keeps students balanced with school work and other activities.”
According to Chadee, who is in the first year of his job, flag football has been the most popular intramural sport by a large margin based on previous A&M – Commerce statistics.
As with previous years, flag football will be divided into two segments – the regular season and postseason. All teams will participate in both.
Each team will play two games per week for three weeks in the regular season. To determine which teams will play one another in the post season, a team captain meeting will take place to rank all of the teams. The highest ranked team will pick when they get to play first, followed by the second-highest ranked team, and so on.
All games will take place in the afternoon at the Cain Sports Complex, with the exception of championship games at the end of the postseason, which will be played at Memorial Stadium.
Championship games will be played for each classification-men’s, women’s and co-ed-as well as for men’s fraternities.
Following the A&M – Commerce championship games, the winning teams will have the option of participating in a regional tournament hosted by Oklahoma State from Oct. 26-28. After the regional tournament, teams will be able to participate in two national tournaments, one of which will be hosted by the University of Texas at Dallas.
Chadee does have one goal for the future of intramural sports, “I’d like to see an increase in the number of women’s and co-rec teams compared to the number of men’s teams. A lot of the people on men’s teams and women’s teams are not playing on the co-rec teams.”
Although the registration period officially lasted from Sept. 11 to 17, anyone who missed registration can still participate by filling out a “free agent” form on the MRC’s website, located under the registration section of the intramural sports page, and teams will be contacted to see if they need any additional players.
If no additional players are needed by any teams one of the four MRC teams will alternate the player in. It will cost late members the same $20 fee as other participants.