Campus Cup competition continues

Story by Blake Sandlin, Staff writer

The spring intramural season is prompting residential colleges and Greek organizations to step up their game in hopes of securing intramural athletics’ highest honor.

Teams compete in a year’s worth of brutal competition in 17 different sports in order to take home the coveted Campus Cup, given to the organizations on campus with the best overall performances in intramural competitions over the course of the year.

Intramural teams eligible to win the Campus Cup are divided into three categories including residential colleges, fraternities and sororities. Those teams have the opportunity to compete in the different sports to not only win an individual championship for their respective organization but also to earn points toward the Campus Cup.

The total points a team earns toward the cup is dependent on the sport they are playing.

The league allocates the majority of points to the five major sports (softball, flag football, basketball, volleyball and soccer).

By participating in one of those major sports, the residential colleges or Greek organizations are awarded 50 participation points, as well as points based on a team’s order of finish starting at 200 points for first place, 180 for second and 160 for third.

For minor sports like water polo, bowling and three-on-three basketball, teams are granted 50 participation points but receive only 100 points for first place finishes, 90 for second and 80 for third.

In order to prevent disorderly behavior among teams, the league enforces a sportsmanship policy.

Director of Campus Recreation and Wellness Steve Leitch said that the system helps to keep teams accountable for their in-game actions.

“Each time a team comes to a game, they are graded on their sportsmanship, and that is kind of a collaborative grade with the referees and the supervisor on duty,” Leitch said. “So they’ll come up with a grade, and your grades break down from zero to 10, with 10 being the best and zero being not able to complete the game. You need a seven average to get into the playoffs, so typically what it does is it’s determining your eligibility for the playoffs.”

Leitch said that although teams sometimes struggle with sportsmanship, the league seems to be moving in the right direction.

“It’s not as bad as years past,” Leitch said. “Every team became eligible for basketball playoffs so I would say the trend is getting better not worse.”

The current rankings at the end of the fall season of play for the residential colleges had Elizabeth in the lead with 1,912.5 total points. Hart is trailing by 135 points in second place, followed by White with 1,717.5 points.

For the sororities, Alpha Sigma Alpha leads with 870, followed by Alpha Gamma Delta with 610 points. Alpha Omicron Pi is 180 points behind with 430 points to round out the top three.

The fraternity leaderboards have Alpha Sigma Phi in first place with 1,065 points, followed by Sigma Phi Epsilon with 850 points. Pi Kappa Alpha is in third place with 765 points.

Austin Spicer, President of Alpha Sigma Phi, said that his fraternity places a precedent on intramural performance throughout the year in hopes of putting his organization in a position to win the cup.

“[Campus Cup] was one of our top priorities of the year considering how close we were the previous year,” Spicer said. “Campus Cup is something all of us fraternities put time towards and it’s great that Murray State offers leagues and sports to keep us busy while having fun competing.”

Although three spring sports have already ended for the season, there are still opportunities for students to get involved in soccer, tennis, volleyball and the IM Combine in hopes of putting their organization over the top.

Leitch said he is in the process of incorporating mid-season score updates to keep students informed of the Campus Cup standings. He said students can expect an update within the next several weeks.

“We might do them mid-semester now,” Leitch said. “We’ll probably do an update mid-fall, end of fall, mid-spring, and end of spring.”

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