Not every Cal Poly student can be Ozzie Smith.
Not every Mustang will be the next John Madden or Mike Krukow.
Hundreds of former and current athletes call San Luis Obispo home, but most of them don’t possess the extraordinary talent required to play at the next level.
That includes mechanical engineering sophomore A.J. Chamorro, who played four years of football at Sacred Heart Prep in Atherton, Calif. Like many high school varsity athletes, Chamorro had aspirations to play Division I collegiate athletics.
“I definitely thought about it,” Chamorro said. “But I had to realize it wasn’t really reasonable.”
Enter intramural sports.
In just one year at Cal Poly, Chamorro competed in intramural basketball, flag football and soccer.
Associated Students, Inc. (ASI) offers a handful of other sports throughout the year, with three different levels of competition.
“It’s not too competitive to where it’s really intense,” Chamorro said. “You still get that feeling like being part of a team and trying to go out there and give it everything you have for your team.”
Registration for intramural sports begins within the first two weeks of each quarter, and costs between $100 and $150 per team.
And while some students would rather take advantage of the state-of-the-art Cal Poly Recreation Center, Chamorro chose intramurals as his method to maintain an athletic lifestyle.
“I don’t necessarily like going to work out,” Chamorro said. “I’d rather play a sport to stay active. I love to be part of a team trying to win. That’s really what drew me in. To keep that drive going, keep that competitive nature in me.”
Another advantage of intramural sports is the minimal time commitment.
According to ASI Recreational Sports Program Coordinator Robyn Claborn, students spend a total of five hours with their intramural team over the course of the entire quarter.
“There’s no scheduled practices, so you’re really only committing to playing one night a week at the same time each night,” Claborn said. “It’s a lot lower commitment with time than a club sport or collegiate sport.”
That grind of a lifestyle called Division I athletics certainly wasn’t made for everyone. But students looking for something a little more competitive than intramural sports and a little less time consuming than Division I athletics should explore club sports.
Business administration sophomore Austin Dodd has been playing soccer since age eight. For years, he competed and traveled all along the West Coast with Crossfire Premier, one of the elite soccer clubs in Washington state.
Like Chamorro, Dodd wanted to be a Division I collegiate athlete.
“DI soccer is an incredible level of play, and I would have loved a run at it,” Dodd said. “If I was recruited to play here, I would have done it in a heartbeat. I was only really recruited to play in D2 and D3 schools.”
So Dodd elected to attend Cal Poly and chose the club sports route.
The men’s club soccer team has four two-hour practices per week, with one or two games every weekend.
Other than the increased time commitment, a major difference between club and intramural sports is the location of the games.
While intramural sports are always confined to the Cal Poly Recreation Center, club teams travel around the West Coast to compete.
“We have been lucky most of our games the past year were home games,” Dodd said. “Traveling isn’t a bad thing though; it’s cool for me, coming from out of state, to explore different parts of California that I have never been too.”
Traveling also brings the players closer together, Dodd says, which has been one of his favorite parts of club soccer.
“The best part about playing soccer has to be the people you meet,” Dodd said. “The people I met through the club are now some of my best friends at school; I’m living with two of them next year.”
Intramural sports also provide opportunities to forge new relationships, Claborn says.
Particularly with free agent registration, where individual students sign up and are placed on a team with others, intramural athletes are put in a position to mingle with plenty of new faces.
“It’s a great way to become more socially integrated into the campus community,” Claborn said. “It’s a great way to meet new people and feel more a part of the Cal Poly community by interacting with students who have a shared interest of sports.”
Chamorro might not be the biggest or the fastest, but for one hour a week, the lights are on, the competition is stiff and a small-stakes game of flag football might as well be the Super Bowl.
“At the end of the day, I think it’s a really good program,” Chamorro said. “I definitely encourage anybody who played varsity sports in high school to continue the joy of what it’s like to be on a team, to work together and to still be able to play the sports that everybody loves.”