One of Dixie State College’s intramural flag football teams made it all the way to the NIRSA National Campus Championship Series Regional Championships.
The Honey Badgers went to the tournament with only three people from their original team, and they took third place out of 19 teams.
Ryan Smith, a freshman general education major from Springdale, said they knew they were going to have an obstacle to face once they started playing.
“What kept us from the championship was our lack of chemistry,” Smith said. “We ended up traveling with a bunch of random men we’d never met before.”
The Honey Badgers took third place out of 19 teams at the tournament and said they would love to go again next year.
Smith said they did a lot better than they’d expected with a team they’d never played with before.
“Our favorite game was our first game against Arizona University,” Smith said. “We didn’t know the rules, so they spanked us bad.”
Smith said they played them again in the tournament and ended up beating them to move on.
“It was a nice revenge game,” Smith said.
Team captain and quarterback Gary Bracken, a freshman general education major from Hurricane, said he felt like the team played well together.
“Quarterback wasn’t my original position,” Bracken said. “We had some mistakes here and there, but that was the biggest thing we were facing before we left.”
Bracken said they only had seven players and no subs.
“We found a good strategy to work on defense, but after so many games we got pretty tired,” Bracken said.
Bracken said he felt like the trip was a great bonding experience for the newly founded team.
“A lot of our original players had to drop out last second due to families and jobs, but overall it was a great experience,” Bracken said.
