Championships are not always won in packed stadiums or sold-out arenas. Sometimes they can be won in empty gyms, where the only fan is a house mate waiting for a ride home, the refs want the game to be over with so they can finish their homework, and the prize is not a trophy or a check, but a T-shirt.
All of this brings us to last Wednesday night, when Sigma Epsilon took on Strike Three for the AU Intramural volleyball championship. On the list of championships, that's probably a step above, say, Wal-Mart Employee of the Week or a Grammy. But still it was important to us.
After getting blown out in our quest to win the intramural football championship we needed another sport. We scored only one touchdown all season, despite having a former NCAA football player. We were so bad that even the Houston Texans could've beaten us. After that disaster, we set our eyes on the volleyball championship.
Wednesday, we did not play the game for money, the highlights on ESPN, or for endorsement deals from fast food joints, but simply to know that we're the best. Oh, and for the T-shirts.
I've been here before. Last year, our intramural soccer team reached the finals, playing a team we had already beaten early in the season. When it came time for the championship game, the team showed up with a whole new squad, composed of random foreign players from nearby embassies. They blew us out of the water. So close, yet so far.
So ever since then I've been looked forward to getting my T-shirt, and volleyball seemed like the best opportunity. There were only three teams in the league - surprising, considering the popularity of men's indoor volleyball. I must say I was scared at first, with my only previous experience coming in high school gym class, not exactly bastion of purists.
Luckily, most of the other players were at about the same level, as were the refs. When the varsity AU volleyball players saw us playing, I'm just glad they only chuckled instead of rolling around on the floor laughing at us.
But there was nothing funny about Game 3 of the championship match. It was tied, 1-1, with us taking the first game, and then Strike Three roaring back to win the second. A back-and-forth contest continued between both sides, until we finally started to get up by more than one point at a time, heading towards the goal of 25.
And when a serve squirted by a Strike Three setter, it was ours.
Madness ensued. Glory was ours. If we could, we would have broken out the champagne bottles to spray each other, or for my housemates, equally delicious Safeway Selects. That night, in an empty gym in D.C., the true passion behind sports showed up.
(And if people see our T-shirts, and ask us what sport we won, we tell them it was football.)
