I’m responsible for posting about athletics here at the Redeemer Student Experience. When I was given this dubious honour, my first thought was, “hmm, I should probably join a team or something.” Sports that don’t involve a large number of high energy impacts between the participants have never been a strong suit of mine, especially when those sports involve fancy skills like “hand-eye coordination” and “agility.” Due to my overall lack of these qualities, varsity sports were probably not an option, but fortunately, Redeemer was there for me.
There’s an intramural volleyball league going on right now, with 20 teams and probably upwards of 150 participants. I’m on one of those teams, which we’ve affectionately named The Victoria Howards. This was mostly by accident. Our team captain, Victoria Howard, couldn’t think of a team name when she signed us up, and the powers that be just wrote her name in the team name field when she left that field blank. Our team came out in near unanimous support of the name, with the only exception being, ironically, Victoria Howard.
The intramural games have a very relaxed feel to them, there are people of both genders and all levels of ability that play, which is nice, because it generally means nobody gets too worked up and everybody’s able to have fun. It’s also free and open to everybody, and of course it comes with the standard Redeemer slogans of community building and Christian closeness and whatnot, which pop up in these articles a lot for a very good reason. I say they’re standard, which is true, but the community here isn’t something I take for granted.
If you play for the my team, there’s also the added benefit of lessons in Christian humility and losing gracefully, which we as a team learned during our first two games, having lost them 25-8 and 25-11. I don’t expect this to improve, because that aforementioned “hand-eye coordination” business isn’t something that we at the Victoria Howards have in large quantities. I’m going to stick with it though, because it’s exciting and fun, even if we aren’t that good. It’s all I can really do until Redeemer gets a men’s rugby team. There’s a women’s rugby team forming this spring, so I don’t feel unjustified in holding out hope. If my hopes are realized, I will join that team, participate in high energy impacts, and report back here immediately. Until then, go Victoria Howards!
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