Recently, Calvin has expanded its extracurricular sports to include badminton intramurals. Headed by the efforts of Michael Bloem, the intramural badminton program started just two weeks ago.

With the activity just beginning, the meetings are still very informal. At this point in time it is being run in an open gym format, with a come-as-you-like philosophy. This means that there are no pressing require-ments for the people that choose to take part. Each night there is a different group of people that show up at any given time.

Presently the intramural badminton time is 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Thursday nights, in the East gym. Four nets are set up, and people start pick-up games by challenging others present to a match. Calvin has always hosted a spring badminton tournament, but this is the first time that there will be year-round badminton, even if it is in a casual setting.

There is a large amount of interest at Calvin for badminton, and it was not hard to find people to come out to the intramural time. “I sent out an email over Student News and got about 30 emails back from people who were interested,” said Bloem. According to Bloem, at 8 p.m. there are not enough nets to accomodate the large group of participants, although attendance decreases closer to 11 p.m..

There is also a large range of badminton history that can be found in the participants. “There’s a wide range [of skills],” says Bloem. “There are people who don’t know all the rules to people who are excellent.”

His own extensive badminton experiences were what inspired Bloem to organize year round badminton. “I played a lot in high school, in Asia. I got pretty seriously into it, playing varsity and going to tournaments in other countries. I want to play at Calvin year round, not just in the spring.”

In the future the badminton players would like to see Calvin participate in a more competitive aspect of this sport. “We’d love to play other schools,” Bloem says. But at present he does not know if similar teams at other schools exist. The possibility exists that Calvin could field a club badminton team, but the earliest that might happen is next year.