East Carolinian

Issue date: 2/12/09 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Cat Potter

It would be fair to say that college football is one of the biggest sporting attractions in the United States. Every fall, the sport takes ESPN by storm, covering every fact and detail about it.

Greenville is no exception to the fall frenzy. Pirate fans enjoy the serenade of "Purple Haze," the boom of canon fire and proudly support their football team through every defeat and victory.

This year, ECU became the proud home of the 2008 Conference USA Champions, but there is another football team representing ECU that the Pirate Nation should recognize: the intramural flag football team, RidonKulous.

RidonKulous is ECU's very own co-rec intramural flag football team that finished third in national competition.

Shadowed by the varsity team's Liberty Bowl berth, the squad traveled to New Orleans from Dec. 28-31 to compete in the 2008 Slingbox ACIS Football National Championships.

"The tournament was great," said team captain Justin Waters. "We got to bond together as a team."

Originally named for the expectation to be a ridiculously bad team, RidonKulous has emerged as the standard in ECU intramural flag football. After a flawless 8-0 regular season, the team made its way to the Regional Championships, hosted by UNC-Wilmington.

In Wilmington, RidonKulous earned its way to the national tournament after a 16-10 come-from-behind victory over North Carolina in the regional contest. The win in regional play funded the journey to the "Big Easy" for the team.

In its first national matchup, RidonKulous was beaten 9-6 by Kansas.

"The feeling of losing for the first time in two or three years was definitely humbling," said Waters.

Battling on like true Pirates, the team took the loss and went on to roll over their next opponent, Northwestern State, 51-7.

Refreshed on what a victory felt like, RidonKulous fought past Ohio, 36-28, and met Nebraska-Lincoln in the semifinals. Only one win from an appearance in the final co-rec showdown, the Greenville squad fell to Nebraska-Lincoln by a score of 34-14. Though RidonKulous fell short of a national championship, a ranking of third in the nation in the team's first national appearance is certainly worthy of the respect and support of the Pirate Nation.

During their stay in New Orleans, ESPN received word that both ECU and Kentucky had representatives present at the tournament. ESPN took advantage of the opportunity to set up a Liberty Bowl preview. Unfortunately, RidonKulous' luck wasn't much better than the varsity squad as it was defeated, 15-0.

However, ESPN failed to mention that the Kentucky representative was an all-male team that was fully rested and that the co-rec RidonKulous Pirates played the exhibition after two consecutive games.

"They were fresh," Waters said. "We were worn out by basically the entire tournament."

Next season, RidonKulous is hoping to take the regional tourney again and then make ECU the next ACIS national champs. The team will need to make some adjustments as it is losing quarterback Chris Riddle as well as a few of the team's female players.

Despite its losses, Waters remains confident.

"We have a few people we added for the tournament," he said. "They're going to step up and be our playmakers."

The RidonKulous crew is a good reminder that you don't have to be a professional athlete to enjoy a good game of pigskin.



This writer can be contacted at sports@theeastcarolinian.com.

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