The Play’s the Factor | Bowdoin School

My first fall at Bowdoin, I wished to play intra-mural soccer. I had performed a bit in highschool, however I used to be not that good. That wasn’t my most important downside, although. My most important downside was that I didn’t know sufficient folks to subject a staff. So I did what I may: I knocked on doorways on my ground till I received fortunate and noticed somebody with a soccer ball. He was on the lads’s membership soccer staff and, importantly, he knew different individuals who may kick a ball in the fitting route.

We confirmed as much as our first sport with sufficient our bodies and a staff identify that made us chuckle: the Pyramid Schemers. I don’t bear in mind who got here up with it or why it caught, nevertheless it did. What I do bear in mind is that we received. Then we stored successful. By the top of the season, we had claimed the intramural soccer championship.

Riding that prime, we figured: why cease there? Winter got here, and we moved to ice hockey. Same staff, totally different sport, similar end result. Championship once more. Sophomore yr rolled round, and we did it throughout—soccer within the fall, hockey within the winter. No such luck dabbling with basketball, however we claimed two extra championships later. At that time, it felt virtually inevitable, like we’d stumbled into some sort of intramural dynasty purely accidentally.

Then junior yr occurred. Everyone scat-tered overseas for various semesters, in numerous nations and totally different time zones. The Pyra-mid Schemers went on indefinite hiatus. I won-dered if we’d ever get the band again collectively.

We did, throughout our senior fall, for soccer. But one thing had shifted. We have been all again on campus, technically, however we have been additionally busier than we’d ever been. Night lessons, senior commitments, thesis deadlines, job purposes—all of the issues that make senior yr really feel such as you’re concurrently sprinting towards the end line and making an attempt to savor what’s left. People have been much less accessible. Games have been squeezed between all the things else demanding our consideration.

We didn’t win the championship this yr. For the primary time since we’d began, we fell quick. But right here’s the factor: it didn’t devastate me the best way I believed it would. Somewhere alongside the best way, intramural sports activities had stopped being about successful and began being about one thing else solely.

I’ve been considering quite a bit recently about what distinguishes play from competitors, and the way not often we give ourselves permission to exist in that in-between house, particularly as ladies. In many of the athletic areas I’d occupied earlier than Bowdoin, there was at all times an endpoint, a metric, a rating. You have been both ok to make the staff, otherwise you weren’t. You both received, otherwise you misplaced. The scoreboard was what informed you your value.

Intramurals supplied one thing totally different—an area the place the stakes have been concurrently actual and never actual in any respect. We stored rating, sure. We wished to win, completely. But we additionally knew that exhibiting up mattered greater than our ability degree and that the one who’d by no means performed hockey earlier than was simply as important to the staff because the one who’d grown up on skates. There was a aggressive facet for positive; we weren’t on the market simply going by the motions, nevertheless it was competitors wrapped in permission to be imperfect, to be studying, to be there purely as a result of it was enjoyable. So a lot enjoyable.

There was nonetheless adrenaline, nonetheless the push of an in depth sport, nonetheless the satisfaction of a objective or a very good defensive play. But beneath all of it was this baseline of ease, this information that whether or not you have been good or horrible on any given evening, you have been nonetheless welcome, and also you’d nonetheless play. If you wished in, you have been in.

My first yr, my expertise with intramurals was intentional in a means I didn’t totally recognize on the time. I used to be actively making an attempt to construct some-thing—a staff, a pal group, a spot to belong on this new setting. I wished to copy the sensation of being a part of one thing, of getting individuals who anticipated you to point out up. It labored, most likely higher than I may have hoped.

But now, senior yr, standing on the opposite aspect of that intentionality, I’m confronted with a unique query: How do I carry this ahead? In a number of months, I’ll be shifting into the following section of life, no matter that appears like, and there received’t be a handy intramural sports activities system ready for me. There received’t be an e mail telling me when my video games can be or a built-in group of people that present up on the similar time each week to do one thing purely for the enjoyment of it.

When potential college students ask me about my athletic involvement at Bowdoin, it’s simple for intramurals to return up. I attempt to not oversell it—I’m not some IM sports activities evangelist—however I do inform them the reality: it’s really enjoyable. Fun in the best way that makes you overlook to verify your cellphone, enjoyable that will get you as much as stroll to the sector at 10:30 p.m., enjoyable that leaves you barely sweaty and fully current, and enjoyable that doesn’t require you to be good at something particularly, even when it typically helps.

I’ve talked to folks over time who’ve drifted from staff sports activities, actually because they felt they weren’t ok, or as a result of they assumed everybody else was taking it extra significantly than they have been. And I get it—there’s vulnerability in exhibiting as much as one thing you’re not naturally expert at, particularly if you’re surrounded by individuals who appear to know what they’re doing. But that’s precisely what makes intramurals precious. It’s one of many few areas left the place mediocrity is not only acceptable however anticipated, the place half the staff is perhaps studying the principles as they play, the place somebody will completely journey over their very own ft at an important second and everybody will chuckle, together with them.

Here’s what I’m beginning to understand, although: this specific taste of competitors—playful, structured sufficient to matter however free sufficient to breathe—is astonishingly uncommon exterior of faculty. We have been good at soccer and hockey. Some of us have been higher than others, after all, however all of us introduced one thing. What made intramurals particular wasn’t that we have been unhealthy at sports activities; it’s that we received to exist on this center floor between informal pickup video games and severe athletic dedication. We cared about successful, confirmed up constantly, constructed actual staff chemistry. But we additionally knew that this wasn’t our complete identification and even the most important a part of our Bowdoin experiences. It was simply… nicely, Monday, Wednesday, and infrequently Sunday nights.

The Pyramid Schemers gave me that. Three and a half years of these nights the place the one requirement was exhibiting up. Most video games we dominated. Some video games we barely received. Some video games, particularly senior yr, we barely had sufficient folks to subject a full staff. But we have been there. We stored exhibiting up.

The lack of construction, paradoxically, kind of created its personal sort of construction. We didn’t have obligatory practices or teaching employees or efficiency opinions. We had a gaggle chat, a sport schedule, and a collective understanding that this mattered to us, even when we couldn’t at all times articulate why. That informality meant we had to decide on it, week after week. Nobody was making us be there. We wished to.

We’re again for ice hockey this winter, senior yr, one final run at a championship. The staff seems to be a bit totally different now; folks’s schedules are extra sophisticated, dedication ranges fluctuate, we’re all managing totally different ranges of senioritis.

What I do know is that this: I’ll bear in mind the actual sort of exhaustion that comes from taking part in a sport you’re solely reasonably good at however deeply take pleasure in. I’ll bear in mind the frilly celebrations after mediocre targets, the enjoyable we had.

More than that, I’ll bear in mind what it taught me about constructing the sort of life I wish to reside after Bowdoin. Not all the things must be glorious. Not all the things must have a transparent objective or end result. Sometimes essentially the most mean-ingful issues are those you select just because they make you are feeling extra like your self.

When I go away campus in May, I received’t be capable to take the Pyramid Schemers with me. But I can take this: the information that it’s value searching for out areas the place pleasure issues greater than ability, the place exhibiting up is sufficient, the place you’re allowed to be imperfect and nonetheless belong. I can take the muscle reminiscence of selecting play over perfection, of constructing group round shared laughter and shared excellence.

The Pyramid Schemers performed and received numerous video games that mattered and didn’t matter in equal measure. We confirmed up for one another, week after week, yr after yr, as a result of we selected to. Somewhere in all that, we found out easy methods to maintain competitors and pleasure in the identical hand, easy methods to care deeply about one thing whereas figuring out it’s in the end only a sport, easy methods to create house for play in a severe world, and easy methods to be a part of one thing greater than ourselves with out dropping ourselves within the course of.

That’s the factor about intramural sports activities that no person tells you—it’s probably not about sports activities in any respect.

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Isabella Ardell ’26 is a sociology main with an economics minor who has labored at Bowdoin as an admissions intern and analysis affiliate and is a cofounder of the Philippine Society and social captain for the alpine ski staff. She is from Houlton, Maine.

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This story first appeared within the Winter 2026 difficulty of Bowdoin Magazine. Manage your subscription and see different tales from the journal on the Bowdoin Magazine web site.