Schedule reworked as SRC shares fields with club teams
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It’s one o’ clock in the morning on a Thursday. Do you know where your flag football team is?
Because of changes to the intramural football schedule this semester, while most students are getting ready for a night of sleep, some are still on the fields of the Student Recreation Complex at the Tempe campus, competing in football games into the wee hours of the morning.
This semester, intramural coordinators added games starting at 10:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights. On Wednesday, the final games begin at 12:30 a.m. and usually end close to one or two in the morning.
Hours were also extended on Sunday, with games now being played from 1:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Josh Hemingway, a political science and history junior who finished playing his last regular season game at 1:30 a.m. Thursday, said he disliked having his games scheduled so late.
“It obviously affects your studies. I have a 9 a.m. class, so I would definitely appreciate an earlier game,” Hemingway said.
Hemingway was also upset at how the late-night games were affecting his team’s game play. “A lot of guys look tired. We’ve got guys messing up, dropping passes. They look like they should be out here playing in their pj’s,” Hemingway said.
A lack of field space prompted the schedule adjustment, said Jen Maxwell, the SRC’s program coordinator for adaptive and intramural sports. The SRC now shares its fields with several ASU sport clubs, she said.
The lacrosse, rugby and soccer clubs had formerly used the indoor football practice facility known as “the bubble” for practices and games, Maxwell said. When the bubble burst during an August storm, the field was left unusable, and the sports clubs were forced to look elsewhere for practice space. The SRC donated the eastern half of its field to the clubs, leaving space for only three flag football fields, and forcing coordinators to extend the hours in which flag football games are played.
Maxwell said she and other coordinators worked hard to fit every flag football team that signed up into the schedule.
“We pretty much locked ourselves in the office and went league by league. It took a while, since it’s pretty hard to match each team’s availability,” Maxwell said.
In fact, none of the 206 teams that signed up this semester was turned away, despite the lack of space.
Maxwell said the SRC would have had to turn away 75 teams if coordinators hadn’t added the 11:30 and 12:30 time slots.
“12:30 isn’t a fun time to play at, but we didn’t want to turn anyone away,” Maxwell said.
Matthew Zweig, a kinesiology sophomore who also had a game late Wednesday night, said he doesn’t mind the late games.
“I like it,” Zweig said. “It gives me a chance to get a full day in before I come here. I have time to finish my homework and everything before night.”
Most players in Zweig’s 12:30 a.m. game said they would be up at that time anyway.
“Wednesday night is no problem,” Zweig said. “But if it was Thursday or Friday night, there’s no way I’d be out here.”
Maxwell said she hasn’t received any information on when the sports clubs will be moved back to other practice fields, but she said she has been told to plan on the same scenario for softball intramurals.
“We’re just rolling with the punches,” Maxwell said. “It’s not the greatest scenario, but we do what we can.”
Reach the reporter at zachary.fowle@asu.edu.


