I know what you’re thinking. What in the world could Maria Leontaras have to say about sports?
Maria, who says all runners look the same because they all could never be her?
Maria, who completed almost two months of intensive summer gym classes in high school so she wouldn’t have to pretend to play sports to get school credit?
I could wax poetic about my love for the Cubs (read: Wrigley Field hot dogs) or share my two years of experience as an athletic trainer, but I’ll spare you.
Instead, we’re going X Games Mode: Dorm Edition. The following is a compilation of the most extreme sports I’ve played during my four years of living on campus, and I welcome you to try them out for yourself.
Hallway swimming
A one-time event, hallway swimming will go down in history as a highlight of freshman year. One of my current roommates and I spent a lot of time in our dorm. I knew we would be friends for a long time when she demonstrated Michael Phelps’ specialty stroke by dragging herself across the carpeted hallway of Regina. She “swam” past the door frame, I watched and the extreme dorm sports were born.
Dorm dashes
An irregular occurrence, dorm dashes take shape in many forms. In the fall of 2019, they meant my roommate Naruto-racing my younger brother’s friends in the dark hall of Le Mans when they visited during a football weekend.
In the fall of 2020, they hypothetically mean running up to the Holy Cross Hall side entrance in the hopes of catching an open door in the wake of revoked swipe access. But it’s only hypothetical, of course.
Cart gymnastics
One blustery day last fall, I stumbled upon a cart on the side of the road. The cart soon found shelter in my dorm room. Primarily used for grocery hauls and moving in and out throughout the semester, the cart has seen better days.
But sometimes, it goes X Games when one roommate sits on it as another spins the cart in circles or runs down the hall. For now, it lives under one of our beds some feet away from the skateboard with a cup taped to the top.
Roommate powerlifting
Living in a quad with the same three people for two academic years leads to a lot of questions, one being who can lift the most. Rather than visiting the gym and lifting actual weights, my roommates and I became resourceful — we lifted each other instead.
The results of this experiment are useless, but now we know who can win in a dorm room chicken fight. That counts for something right?
Bug bouts
A seasonal sport, bug bouts have persisted throughout my time on campus. Gnats swarming lamp lights at 1 a.m. Stink bugs terrorizing dinnertime. A wasp nest waiting to explode near a window. We’ve been in the stands for it all. But the sporting doesn’t begin until the fight for extermination does.
Mostly a team sport, we toss shoes to one another for a quick swat or stomp. We jump with brooms to swing at bugs on the massive overhead light. We (I) scream the entire time. X-treme.
Regret Olympics
The most impressive feat of all doubles as one of the most extreme to ever occur on a college campus: sitting on the couch, sunglasses on, large, black coffee in hand, forcing your roommates to keep the blinds closed until the sun goes down.
Most sports come with no regrets, but when it’s on X Games Mode, some things are bound to go wrong. But what’s college life without being a little dumb and a little extreme? Happy sporting!
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