Intramural sports: Wannabe Messis and personalized jerseys

An intramural player scores a goal during an April 16 game. Many teams have customized uniforms or team names that involve inside jokes. Photo by Bonnie Cash

Intramural athletes can get creative with their team names. As a result, some teams get clever – and sometimes crude.

Ben Manley’s team, “Two Goals, One Cup,” is a result of this ingenuity. The name is an ode to an explicit viral video that circulated the internet in 2007.

“One of our buddies thought it would be funny,” said Manley, who was a football and soccer player in high school.

Manley, a junior business administration major, is one of the hundreds of people who populate Wilson Field from 8 to 10 p.m. on Monday and Wednesday nights.

From football players to law students to the Chapman men’s soccer team, intramural soccer is filled with people who take the game seriously.

Intramural sports at Chapman are open to all students – from undergraduates to graduates – and are often populated by athletes stepping outside of their typical sport.

Intramural soccer involves smaller teams, and competition isn’t as organized or as regulated as club or intercollegiate soccer. However, most participants take it seriously, said Andrew Orellana, who oversees the games for his work-study job. Many are competitive, he said, but some are just looking for a stress reliever.

“I really enjoy watching all of the participants because some of them just want to have fun – but most of them take it very seriously,” Orellana said.

Orellana fills in for teams that don’t have all of their players, but watches most games from the sidelines.

Many teams, like Manley’s, have personalized uniforms and funny team names.

Brandon Salvatierra, a Chapman law and business graduate student, hadn’t played soccer in six years, but on Monday nights, he’s reintroduced to the sport he played throughout childhood and high school.

“Playing intramural soccer is like learning how to ride a bicycle, and being really bad at it,” Salvatierra said.

His team name is The Jamie Dimons, an ode to business professor Jake Aguas, who teaches Salvatierra’s organizational management class.

“Our professor keeps telling us about Jamie Dimon, who is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, and we thought it would be a funny inside joke,” Salvatierra said.

Julie Hawk, a transfer sophomore from Vermont, is a business administration major who has always enjoyed playing soccer. Intramural soccer is a place for her to make new friends, she said.

“I am kind of a floater, I go where the teams need me,” Hawk said. “I play with the team Freshman 15 and Two Goals, One Cup,” Hawk said.

A staple of intramural soccer is players who think they’re more talented than they are, Orellana said.

“It’s funny to see some of the players try to be like Lionel Messi or Neymar, but they just aren’t,” Orellana said.