Registration opened Monday for this term’s intramural leagues — the deliberately low-stakes competitions where the only entry requirements are a name on a form and a tolerance for creative team names. Five leagues run this term.
The leagues
- Five-a-side football — Tuesdays
- Basketball 3v3 — Wednesdays
- Volleyball — Thursdays
- Badminton doubles — lunchtimes
- Table tennis singles — ongoing ladder
How to register
- Open the student portal and find “Intramurals” under Activities
- Register a full team, or join solo and be placed on a team that needs players
- Pick your league and preferred division: “competitive” or “we’re here for the vibes” (their words)
- Registration closes Friday next week; fixtures publish the following Monday
New this year: the two-division split. “The perennial complaint was one league containing both former club players and people learning the rules that afternoon,” said intramural coordinator Deniz Aydin. “Now you choose your level of seriousness on the form. Both divisions get the same courts and the same referees.”
Also new: solo sign-ups are guaranteed a team. Last term, 40 students registered alone and every one was placed. Matches are refereed by trained student volunteers, who are also recruiting — referees are paid in priority court bookings and, per tradition, snacks.
Why intramurals exist at all
The programme’s founding logic, Aydin said, is the gap between the varsity teams — which serve perhaps a tenth of students — and everyone else who simply wants to play something weekly without trials. Last term’s registration data backs the premise: over half of intramural players belong to no other sports programme, and the badminton lunchtime league, the least athletic-looking offering, had the highest attendance rate of anything the sports department runs. “The gap was real,” Aydin said. “It just needed a form.”
The programme’s one persistent shortage is not players but referees: last term two badminton weeks ran on an honour system after volunteer numbers dipped. The training session for new referees — one evening, run by the sports department — doubles as a rules refresher that several players attend simply to settle arguments. “Half our referee sign-ups come from people who arrived to dispute a call,” Aydin said. “We count that as recruitment.”
