Volleyball Intramurals

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!

zoom zoom

Tonight was a fun night. It was the last home volleyball game of the regular season and our men's team did very well and beat Humber in 4 sets - it was a pretty amazing game. I love Wednesday's in general though. Somehow I managed to get a really good schedule this semester, and all my regular classes are done by Wednesday afternoon. Tomorrow, I have my internship and then my reading break starts.

The last few weeks have been crazy, not just for me I think. January is always booked solid with events, conferences, and social activity and, if you are not mindful of it, mid-terms and other schoolwork sneaks up on you. Luckily things have been going quite well this semester nonetheless, and, even though I have had a very busy January, I really have been able to enjoy it.

Reading break should be a lot of fun. First, I get to visit some of my family and then most of next week will hopefully be spent snowboarding in Quebec! A bunch of my friends are heading to Mexico, Mississippi, or downtown Hamilton for mission trips and secretly that also sounds like a very great idea. But, I think I am not in a place to complain.

It is ridiculous how quickly this semester has gone, I can't believe it is the middle of the term. Before I know it I will be graduating...

Snow is good for dorm life

So, it was turning out to be a pretty good day. Wednesday's are always pretty good, busy, but good. Chapel was really good, as we tried to take a look at how technology can sometimes take away from us being actually focused on God. It can take away from us being able to hear God speak amidst all the noise, alerts, and constant communication.

In the evening there were varsity volleyball games, the atmosphere was amazing! Unfortunately we dropped the game in the fifth set to Mohawk. Having three of the guys in my dorm on the volleyball team, you can't expect post-volleyball game to be the best time. Well it was.

First we had devotions and we expanded further on the idea of noise in our lives, we decided to have a noise free hour every night in our dorm, a time where we can still do whatever, but we would try to eliminate technology use. It has been encouraging so far. After devotions and clean-up we opened our back door and people threw snowballs inside. We felt the challenge and responded. We ended up playing red rover and having a snow ball fight for the next hour and a bit, we came back inside warmed up and headed to bed. It was a pretty good post-volleyball night.

Life and CITB

It's the final stretch for the fall term, this means a couple of things. 1. There is a switch from mid-terms and presentations to papers. 2. Snow is coming soon, in fact it was snowing just yesterday. 3. During exam week there will be midnight breakfast! - about half the student population comes out to have breakfast just before midnight, our profs serve us breakfast and it is probably one of my favourite events of the year.

Yesterday was this year's third Church in the Box (CITB). I have been involved with CITB since I was in my first year. Being in my fourth year right now means there have been lots of services in that time. CITB is a monthly worship service that happens at Redeemer, about 800 people come out from the Redeemer community and the surrounding area to spend an evening in worship. This year we are dealing with the theme "Life Transformed" - to expand on that: looking at how God transforms our lives today. Yesterday Matt Pamplin shared with us about how God transforms our character - how we can be heroes. He looked at how David (as in King David) was used by God, even though he had to wait 20 years before he could be King.

Other things that have happened in the last weeks, we got an honourable mention for dorm clean-up. Maybe next semester we will win. This coming week promises to be good busy. This Wednesday there is the big volleyball game against Mohawk College. Our gym promises to be a crazy place. I am an Resident Advisor (RA) this year and three of my boys are on the volleyball team, which makes me extra excited. Besides that I get to live in a dorm with 7 other guys - it's a pretty good experience.