Intramural Basketball Kicks Off Under New Coordinator

Sam Schmid, Staff Writer, Advanced Journalism

Intramural basketball, one of the popular attractions here at Notre Dame Academy, has a new adviser, Greg Geiser, to run the program.  Intramural games began after Christmas break.

Geiser is not new, however, to the intramural basketball scene. He played intramurals all four years of high school and also some of his time in college.

“Intramural basketball was so important to me in high school.  I got to play a sport I loved relatively competitively, got a lot better and made lifelong friends,” he said.

Along with playing intramurals, Geiser also coached high school basketball with Coach Matt Klarner at Xavier High School.

Geiser will not make any major changes to intramural basketball at NDA, just logical ones,  including changing the halves to 15 minutes from 20 minutes. This is to reduce injury and to finish lopsided games.

Intramural players primarily average two to four games every Saturday, from January up until the beginning of March.

Many students are involved in intramural basketball this year. Geiser projects there will be around seven student teams, plus the faculty team.

Included in the student teams is one girls team, led by Olivia Vanden Elzen. “We’d love to have more [girls teams],” Geiser said.

His expectations for the upcoming intramural activities are to continue what Brian Bobinski, the former adviser, started.

It was always fun, competitive, and well organized.  That seems, to me, to be the gold standard for intramurals, and I hope I can keep that going,” Geiser said.

Geiser was chosen as the new adviser due to his successful leadership and performance in the 3-on-3 basketball tournament during Spring Week in recent years.

Geiser enjoys being the new adviser. “I love organizing things,” he said, “so this is all about that. I like that I have such good, experienced refs that I can entrust them with the other games while I play on the faculty team.”

Nevertheless, he is displeased with some actions by intramural players.

“I do not like arguing or complaining about fouls, players taunting each other (if not in good fun), or inappropriately physical play,” he said.

Geiser believes these behaviors should be eliminated from Notre Dame Academy altogether, because he thinks we, as a community, are “better than that.”

As intramural teams play throughout these upcoming months, the winning team will earn two prizes–T-shirts and, more importantly, bragging rights.