PIKE kicks their way to the top spot

 The last two undefeated teams in the intramural kickball league faced off at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 28, at the old baseball fields behind the Smith University Center (UC).    

Derrick Young, head of intramural sports on campus, put together the kickball league and organized the tournament after months of deliberation with his supervisor Chris Kennedy, Vice President of Student Life, about which intramural activities to hold for the upcoming year. 

“Once the schedule is approved, I start on making flyers, getting information to Housing and all across campus,” Young said. “I also send emails to former managers [to ask] if they would like to play again. This year, I also invited all the Fraternities and Sororities to participate.”   

PIKE, a group composed of members of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity on campus, made it to the kickball championship last year. They used their momentum to emerge victorious over Fried Chicken Wednesdays, a group of students from the FMU Honors Program, with a score of 12-1. The game ended prematurely since once PIKE led by over 10 points in the sixth inning. 

“It definitely helped that we had some guys with backgrounds in soccer and backgrounds in baseball, and when you put the two together, it essentially makes the sport of kickball, which explains why we’re such a dominant force,” Cullen Dore, a sophomore mass communications major, said. “The main goal as with other intramural sports we played in is to win the championship and get as many points for PIKE as we can.”   

While the game tied at zero for the first inning, the tide quickly turned in PIKE’s favor by the top of the second.   

The fraternity came out strong with a quick 2-0 lead in the top of the second inning, eventually increasing the gap to 7-0, then 10-0. In the bottom of the fourth inning, Fried Chicken Wednesdays got their lone point from sophomore psychology major and team captain, Jacob Prete.   

“Despite the outcome, I learned to work more on coordination and teaching the team the rules of kickball,” Prete said. “I am very confident in my team’s performance, and I know that we’re ready to practice a little more and win the next games we play.”