Inner tube water polo takes this year’s crown for best intramural sport at UC Davis
By OMAR NAVARRO — features@theaggie.org
With 36.8% of the vote, inner tube water polo took home the victory of best intramural sport. Currently ongoing during spring quarter, this intramural sport is played at the Rec Pool and is great for those familiar to it and those that are new as well.
“It’s something that takes a lot of the team out of their comfort zone,” said first-year international relations major Katie McLain. “Everyone is kind of on the same level because no one knew how to play. It’s just a lot of fun.”
After making a team through the Rec Sports portal, the set up of the inner tube water polo team has five players a side — a goalie and four other “pool players” whose goal is to try and figure out a way to score. While still continuing to stay on the tube, it continues to go back and forth while both teams try to score and defend. The nature of the sport is like any other, but being in the pool can attract students who may not otherwise participate in other intramurals.
“I don’t like [other] sports. They stress me out,” said C.C. Clark, a fourth-year psychology major. “All of a sudden here I am in Davis and someone asked me if I wanted to do intramurals. I said ‘Obviously not’, but someone said it was inner tube water polo and I love swimming.”
“What’s great is that no one is taking it too seriously, it’s fun splashing in a pool and playing with your friends,” Clark said.
The kicker for inner tube water polo is that, per the rules, you can also flip a players’ tube over if they are in possession, adding not another level of strategy but also fun.
“The fun of it is that when someone from the other team has the ball, you can sink them with two hands and flip their tube, then it’s your ball,” McLain said.
Still, despite all of the enjoyment students have in playing this intramural sport, you don’t miss out on the competition. If you are looking for competitiveness, some teams do still go out there and want to win.
“At first I thought each team was just going to be every [single] team playing with their friends for fun,” McLain said. “It’s turned out that [some] are more competitive than I thought, but that makes it even more fun.”
At the end of the day, whether students want to raise the intensity level or not there is something that a lot of people can get out of intramural inner tube water polo. Even though it may not be as popular as other sports, getting together with friends to play makes this an enjoyable experience for all skill levels.
Written by: Omar Navarro — features@theaggie.org
