Yep…That’s Randy Ayers in 1980 (Yes…1980!) leading his Chocolate Swirl team to the Miami Intramural Basketball Championship!
Ayers had 25 points and John Shoemaker had 14 points in the 62-57 win. I’m certain it is the only intramural team in Miami history to feature two NBA draft picks in the lineup.
How could they play on an intramural team? I didn’t know so I had Bob Ruth write an article about it!
Yeah I asked the same thing when I ended up guarding former Miami player (in grad school but hoops eligibility used up) Todd Staker in an intramural game. They had 3 former D1 players. Staker and I were the same size, and while I never thought I could play D1, every possession in that game drove home the fact that I was nowhere near D1 ability.
Our frat team won the Campus Intramural hoops championship in 1976. (Used to have a trophy but my wife made me throw it away during one of our moves).
We didn’t have any former Miami varsity hoops players, but in those days college teams fielded a freshmen team. Our frat team featured 4 former Miami non scholarship frosh hoops players, and we had 6 guys over 6-5.
It was cool to play the finals at Millet.
With three former D1 players, I bet they did pretty well.
Staker was good player…Especially in his junior year. He would have been tough to guard!
I did two seasons of intramural co-ed softball with friends from marching band, we won two games (both by mercy rule). And that’s how you know the Quiddich team was really bad.
It was the all-campus preseason tournament just before semester break. They beat us in the quarterfinals… ran us out of the gym basically, and did the same in the semis and finals.
Stark contrast to some stories I heard during the Cooper era of guys going to games, seeing someone they’d played pickup against at the rec, and being absolutely befuddled that those were dudes on a D1 roster.
The “open” intramural league at Duke was brutal. My graduate program had an all-conference D3 player and a young prof (!) who’d played semi-pro ball in England, and we thought we were pretty great. But then the business school rolled up for the playoffs with Tommy Amaker and two guys who’d played at UVA. And the law school started Jay Bilas.
I hope you did the right thing and dunked on Bilas’ face.
Sadly, my stature (5’7") and vertical didn’t make that an option. I’m not Spud Webb.
I played pickup against Dernard Newell, that guy could really play.
Intramural team names are the best. I remember a basketball team, “Twice Down the Court and Sucking for Air”.
When I was a freshman, quarterback Sherman Smith had a (I think) intramural champions team named “What It Is.”
Newell was there when I was there. I remember him jawboning me when I was reffing one of his intramural games at Withrow.
I can’t access the article. Were they taking grad classes? Both graduated in 1978 and Shoemaker was in the Dodger’s minor league system then.
It takes a while to load. The article doesn’t discuss how they were able to play.
Note Todd Jones played for another team.
My dad had a similar story about intramural football for grad students at Chicago. He was on the humanities team, which was largely made up of the kind of people you’d expect to be getting advanced degrees in history or languages or whatever. Then they lined up across from the business and law school teams, and they were like half guys who had played B1G football.
There were at least a couple of guys at UChicago Law School when my kid was there who had played NCAA varsity hockey. Minnesota Law School has a hockey team called the Fighting Mondales. One of the kids from our Seattle Junior Hockey Association is there now. He played at Shattuck, in the NAHL and at St Thomas as they were transitioning.
I played 5-on-5 two years and we made the tournament both years. We won a round each year. We were eliminated by a team of football players one year and the juggernaut Jimmy John’s team the other, who had won at least 1 championship. They were ahead of their time pulling up for 3s in transition. We kept up with them for a half or so but they were just too much.
