Students competed in Campus Recreation’s Women’s Flag Football Tournament April 1-2 at the Liberty Mountain Intramural Complex.
Intramural Sports aimed to provide a safe but competitive competition for students of all skill levels to enjoy.
The tournament on Friday consisted of 14 teams with each playing in two rounds. On Saturday, the all-day competition ranked the teams into a single elimination bracket.
Team names like “Mullet Stallions” and “Training Camp Cuts” brought a touch of humor to the event.
This competition has been hosted once a semester since 2008. Director of Intramural Sports Ed Barnhouse said that this year they hosted the largest number of teams Intramural Sports has seen.
The winning team received championship T-shirts and their team name displayed on the Championship Wall located in LaHaye Recreation & Fitness Center.
“The ladies who register to play want to have fun and compete. I think that can be said for all the sports we offer throughout the semester,” Barnhouse said.
Overall, Barnhouse liked that the competition gave female students a unique opportunity to be competitive with their friends.
“It gives the ladies an opportunity to show that they can play football too,” Barnhouse said.
Before every tournament, Intramural Sports holds a captains meeting to all players that features a Q&A session where they can learn more about the rules of the game. The staff also encourages players to ask questions throughout the entire tournament for any clarification.
Each team could have up to 16 players, but many of the teams varied in the number of players they had.
The 13 players of the “End Zone Chasers” had a total of five wins over the course of the tournament. The “Sunday Schooled” team only had five players and suffered a “pretty bad” defeat.
“Then we only had five people for the Saturday game, so we lost pretty bad,” Meghan Williams said.
However, this defeat only encouraged Williams to push herself for the next game.
“I still had fun playing with my team and would try again next semester with a few more people,” Williams said.
Another player Jenna Shupert from the “Will Sports Live” team joined her indoor soccer league team in the
football tournament.
“It was pretty intense, but I had fun with my team, and it was good to get two wins last night,” Shupert said.
This was her first flag football tournament, and she encouraged others to join the event next semester.
“Join a team with a lot of your friends, and just remember to have fun,” Shupert said.
For more information on Intramural Sports, students can visit liberty.edu/intramurals.
Haydon is a news reporter. Follow her on Twitter
Travis Burnett
A pioneer in the flag football community, Travis helped co-found the Flag Football World Championship Tour, FlagSpin and USA Flag. Featuring 15+ years of content creation for the sport of flag football, creating and managing the largest flag football tournaments on the planet, coaching experience at the youth and adult level as well as an active player with National and World Championship level experience.
