Shamrocks, Whirlwinds prepare for interhall flag football season

Interhall flag football is almost upon us, and the women’s dorms are ready.

Welsh Family Hall held tryouts the second week of school. With more girls trying out than allotted spots on the A team, cut players overflowed onto the B team.

“Cuts are never like ‘you can’t play flag football,’” says senior captain Clare Durkin. “There’s always an opportunity for everybody to play. The A Team practices more. For the B Team it’s more, ‘Do you want to have this fun experience?’ It’s more casual.”

Durkin lives off campus now, along with fellow senior captain Ellen Foley. Junior captain Claire Cahill still resides in Welsh Fam. The two said their interhall flag football team bond transcends this distance.

“This is one of the best ways to meet upperclassmen,” Cahill says. “A lot of times, you can only meet the people in your section or if you’re on Hall Council. But this is a great opportunity to meet off-campus seniors, as well as people living all around the dorm.”

Of course, whether or not off-campus, filling holes left by last year’s seniors always presents a challenge.

“We graduated our quarterback, which was very stressful,” Durkin says. “But we’re really excited because we have three different freshman girls who are looking out to be our quarterbacks, so they’re totally untested talent.”

Freshman candidates, on the other hand, provide a sense of stability.

“We’re excited for them to stay and continue on the next four years,” Cahill says. “The past two years, we’ve had senior quarterbacks so we’ve been stuck every year — but now we’re excited for years to come.”

For this year, the captains have several goals.

“I want this to be the highlight of everybody’s fall semester,” Durkin says. “I think in the past it has been for me. And I think a big part of that is going to the championship, because you get to play in the stadium. I think especially just with underclassmen and upperclassmen, [we want to create] relationships between different grades.”

Welsh Fam considers a couple different dorms as big competition this season.

“We always have our big rivalry with Ryan,” Durkin says. “We lost to them in the championship last year, but we’re back. We’re hungry. PDub always has a good program. They run a good team.”

Durkin listed McGlinn Hall, who held their tryouts last week, as competition too.

“Our quarterback graduated,” says McGlinn Hall senior captain Mary K. Wentzel. “Some pretty good girls on defense graduated. But we’ve got a junior that’s gonna step up as quarterback. We’re excited for that. She’s good.”

Wentzel and Katherine Cameron are co-captains of McGlinn’s A team this year.

“As captains we want to have fun and also work really hard,” Wentzel says. “We’ve lost some players, but not that many. We have a lot of seniors that have been playing since freshman year, and we’ve retained a lot of talent so we know that we have the capability to win it all. So, as a team goal of course we want to win the championship — and then also we got a lot of knew freshmen this year, so [we want to] show them the ropes and pass down the legacy.”

Wetzelt praises the freshman that have joined the Shamrock squad.

“We’ve got some pretty good-looking freshmen,” she says. “Some on offense, some on defense but we’ve got some ‘athletic weapons,’ I would say.”

As a senior on the team, Wentzel said she’s experienced a lot of memorable moments already.

“The tough wins are the best, because it’s an exciting game, and it’s close, so you have to work really hard and get to see people make big plays and stuff,” she says. “Being on offense, I love seeing defense make good plays because we get to celebrate and watch the game instead of play it.”

Potential tough games depend on each team’s coaches, according to Wentzel.

“I know Ryan won last year because they had Chris Fink as a coach, and he’s pretty good,” she says. “So if he’s still around, we’ll have our eyes out for them.”