This semester, the Office of Student Activities and Leadership (OSAL) decided to offer flag football as an intramural sport. However, interest for the sport waned after the first game, and the office eventually decided to cancel the season.

One of the main reasons the OSAL office decided to have flag football was because last semester the office asked students what sports they wanted to see being held and a lot of them showed excitement towards football.

“When I talked about doing flag football as an intramural sport, there seemed to be a lot of interest and a lot of people said they wanted to sign up,” said Spenser Darden, the director of OSAL.

Chaminade is a commuter campus with a majority of the student population that commutes to campus. Holding the intramural football games off campus at Mo’ili’ili may have hurt the student interest.

“Since it is held off campus it brings some stress to the players because they either live on campus or commute,” said Nick Fuller, a sophomore at Chaminade, who was interested in playing but didn’t because it was held away from CUH. “It also brings stress to the commuters because they all have to come from all over the island. Having a spot on campus would decrease some of the stress for both sides.”

However, intramural basketball is one of the most successful intramural sports and is held on the upper courts of campus.  There are a lot of students, both on-campus residents and commuter students, who are willing to play basketball. Currently there are 56 players signed up to play basketball versus the 14 players that showed up to play on the first day of the season.

“The majority of the students here are passionate about basketball and that’s what they want to play,” said Darden.

With the announcement on Nov. 1 that flag football has been canceled for the rest of the semester, the OSAL office is going back to re-evaluate how to better pull off a successful flag football season. The OSAL office is committed to putting together successful programs so that the students here at Chaminade have all a lot of ways to better enjoy their time here. The OSAL office is taking what they know, which is that the students want flag football, and try to figure what played a factor in the slow decline of interest.

“We asked students what sports they want,” said Darden. “And that’s why we decided to do flag football. With the venue being off campus that also played a factor. We kind of have to re-examine what day and where we have it. Since we have such good participate with basketball it shows that students want to play, it’s just a matter of when and where we hold the sport.”