Before I ruffle too many feathers, I must say that the Intramural Sports Department has a difficult task of scheduling games during the year. I wouldn’t want that job. There are a lot of teams to juggle, and some of the fraternities and sororities have other commitments that may keep their teams off the field.
That’s fine. I don’t have a problem with helping those groups out so they don’t have to forfeit games.
The same goes for all the other student organizations on campus that might not be as flexible as other teams.
But I’m not going to say that they do a good job, either.
The softball season is the prime example that somebody isn’t very well versed in logistics.
It’s also unfortunate that the weather has not cooperated with the softball season, but that seems to be where the worst scheduling has happened this year.
Let’s face it, this is Tennessee, and the weather can go from one extreme to another in a matter of hours.
The situation’s not ideal to begin with.
Last week, for example, games had to be played on Friday and Saturday to accommodate the backlog of rained-out games. That’s a problem.
The schedule is so tight that even one night of rain-outs can cause havoc.
Here’s my solution: Play games on Sunday nights.
Sure, it might interfere with the church crowd or the group of people that don’t arrive back in time to play on Sunday nights.
But I’m sure that there are teams willing to play on Sunday nights.
Fridays and Saturdays are sacred to college students.
There were enough defaulted games on Saturday that it could have been considered useless.
I think more teams would be willing to play on a Sunday night than on Friday or Saturday. To a college student, those nights are sacred.
Let’s go a bit further. The grouping of teams in some divisions is absolutely ridiculous.
For example, in the Women’s Pro division, there are two divisions. One of them has six teams. The other division has exactly one team.
This is absurd. Every team in the six-team division was allowed to play three games, and the Blue Barracudas, well, didn’t. I think four and three makes a little bit more sense, no?
The Men’s Collegiate conference has eight divisions, six of them with four teams, one with three, and another with six.
Why is this? Move one team out of the six-team division into the three-team group and you are as close to level as you can be.
Not perfect, mind you, but not senseless, either.
The Co-Rec group, which never really got off the ground with all the rainouts, had 20 teams.
Did they get put into four five-team divisions? Nope. Two of them had four teams, and the other two had six.
Where’s common sense and simple math, people? Seems like it isn’t practiced here.
This softball season has been a train wreck. The Co-Rec Division was nixed after too many rainouts.
They were scheduled to have a tournament to make up for the lack of playing time.
But I’m not sure if that even got off the ground with all of the screwy weather we’ve had in the Upper Cumberland.
This shouldn’t have to happen. Next year, learn from the scheduling mistakes and maybe things might work out.
The students pay enough to go to school at Tech as it is.
The least the Intramural Department can do is give them a chance to play games.
They’re trying, but they’re fighting a losing battle here.
I will say this, though. They do a good job with the other sports and it’s a very time-consuming process.
I hope that this year was just a fluke and that the 2010 softball efforts won’t be this bad. The students don’t deserve it this way.
