Intermediate basketball: It just means more.
The average St. X student isn’t good enough to make the St. X basketball team, but thanks to intermediate basketball, this doesn’t necessarily mean that their high school basketball career is over. Intermediate basketball is a league made possible by the Catholic Schools Athletic Association (CSAA) where high school students can represent their parishes.
When it comes to the intermediate league, grade school pride is everything. Almost every team practices once a week at their grade school to prepare for games and to catch up with old friends. Also, teams set up exhibitions and scrimmages against each other out of a crave for intermediate basketball.
Every student at St. X who plays intermediate basketball or is around the league to any degree is familiar with the @intermediatereport instagram account. The “intermediate report” is run by fellow students which allows for more accurate coverage of the league itself and what it means to players. Each week the instagram page releases new rankings modeled after the AP poll. Due to the bias each player has towards their grade school, the rankings are met with a lot of backlash and upset players which is evident in the posts’ comments.
Intermediate basketball is typically more appealing and more popular to the students at St. X than St. X’s own intramural basketball circuit. For example, intramural only has four regular season games and intermediate has seven. Intermediate basketball is forty minute games as opposed to the fourteen minute intramural games. Also, the games are played on Friday nights, which makes for a fun end to the week and start to the weekend for the players.
Overall, the sentiment of playing with childhood best friends who went to the same grade school is why most high school students enjoy playing intermediate basketball. It’s not just a recreational basketball league, rather a meaningful, fun, and competitive league that all high school students, especially at St. X, loves to play every winter.
Again, it just means more.
