It was April 23, and Gabriel Torreblanca hit the shot of his life.
It was not CIF-sanctioned and did not count for any competitive league, but the enormous crowd that filled the TO football field erupted as Torreblanca celebrated with his team, the Hot Shots.
This is the vision Jose “Queso’’ Hernandez saw when he started the soccer club during lunch last year. It has since evolved into the Intramural Sports Club, and it continues to grow day by day. As each meeting passes, high schoolers show that the childhood spirit of playing dodgeball and kickball still lives and thrives.
Before there were more than 150 students watching the kickball championship during lunch on April 11, Hernandez was coordinating soccer games at lunch as a sophomore.
“There was a lack of athletic clubs at TO during lunch,” junior Alan Ko told the Lancer. “Queso started the soccer club last year, and I have wanted to start an athletic lunch club since sophomore year.”
From there, Queso and four of his friends, now board members, decided to start up the Intramural Sports Club. The first club meeting was at the tail end of January. It was announced that the opening sport would be dodgeball. The first game day soon followed on Feb. 1.
The game days went on and the number of fans increased, and on Leap Day, the day of the dodgeball championship, 170 students came out to watch. The Powdered Donuts brought home the dodgeball championship with senior Daniel Plascencia being named MVP of the game.
Soon after, it was announced that the next sport would be kickball. This took the campus by storm, catching the eye of numerous students who weren’t already going to the gym for the dodgeball games. The first kickball game-day came on March 11, and the format was simple, two divisions of teams, each team would play four games, two divisional and two non-divisional, and then the best of the best would move onto the playoffs.
The playoffs consisted of four teams, and the championship would be exactly one month after opening day, the Ice Cubes, the dodgeball runners-up, were able to redeem themselves and take home the kickball title, backed by three-sport junior Zach Reer, who scored the run that earned victory, and the title, for his team.
The title game not only brought nearly 200 TO students, but the district superintendent, Dr. Mark McLaughlin, as well as the TO Acorn Newspaper to watch and support the kickball championship game.
Soccer will be the last intramural sport for this school year, but Queso and Ko look to bring bigger and better things to the club next school year.
“My goal for this club is for middle school kids to see that high school isn’t as scary as they think it is,” Hernandez said “And that they can have fun playing sports as well as in the classroom.”