The coveted ETSU intramural championship T-shirt will be up for grabs in the Campus Recreation-sponsored invitational flag football tournament beginning Friday afternoon. The tournament returns most of the teams from the men’s competitive playoff bracket and some of the successful playoff teams from the recreational bracket.
Ten teams will compete in a three-day tournament to decide who is the Super Weekend football champion.
“This will be something different that we’ve not done in the past,” said tourney co-coordinator Adam Knobloch. “We’ve been trying to come up with some new ideas to spark more interest in campus rec. Since flag football is our most popular sport, the football tournament was one of those ideas, and Super Bowl weekend was just a natural time to have it.”
Knobloch said that he did not want anyone who did not get invited to join the tournament pool to feel scorned by the intramural department. “The original plan was to have every team that competed in the competitive playoffs and the two teams in the recreational championship to play in the weekend tournament,” he said.
“As some teams became eliminated from that equation for one reason or another, we began to go down the list and call other teams from the rec playoff bracket, and that’s how we arrived at our current pool of 10 teams,” he said.
Steven Reagan, captain of the TG/SAE team, is one person who can barely wait for Friday afternoon. “I’m excited about this weekend,” he said. “It gives all of us who fell short in the regular season another shot at a championship and a T-shirt.”
Reagan’s TG team, which came within one reception of playing in the championship game during the regular season, has added some more firepower from the SAE first team, making them even more dangerous. “Even though the team is different, the game plan shouldn’t change too much, but we’ve still got a few tricks up our sleeve that we’re anxious to pull out,” he said.
Dustin Blazer, coach of the regular season champion DuckSquad, knows what lies ahead for his team. “We know we’ve got a bull’s eye on our chest in this tournament,” he said. “We’ve seen most of these teams at least once, some of them twice already. It is very difficult to beat anyone twice, so no game will by any means be an easy win. We will just have to go out this weekend and play good DuckSquad football and hope to come out the winners.”
Tournament co-coordinator Bart McFadden sees this weekend as an opportunity for bigger and better things for campus rec. “This is just something fun that everyone can enjoy and have fun with,” McFadden said. “I think the tournament will go really well and I hope this can be the beginning of more weekend activities and special events for campus rec to sponsor.”
Games will be Friday from 4 -9 p.m., Saturday from noon-8 p.m. and Sunday from noon- 3:30 p.m.

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