This winter, Williston is keeping athletic spirits up by offering an intramural basketball league to students, an alternative to competing against other schools.

While there are still plans for the varsity team to compete against peer schools this winter, the intramural teams will consist of every other student signed up for basketball. There will be no junior varsity or thirds team.

Athletic Director Mark Conroy is excited about this new idea, and wants to create something similar to a normal winter experience for students.

The boys will be divided into two groups (grades 9-12 and grades 7-8), he explained. Teams will practice 2-3 times a week for an hour each and play on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Conroy expects 4-5 weeks of games.

January 18 is the first day students return in-person to campus for the second trimester, so the goal is to have the league up and running as soon as possible after everyone returns. Masks will be worn by all players in accordance with Williston’s Covid guidelines.

This format of games on Wednesdays and Saturdays will be very familiar to returning students; these are the same days games are played during the year. This will hopefully give teams a structure similar to that of a normal season.

Even though this is the first winter attempting this, Conroy is determined to make it as competitive and engaging as possible. He wants students to be able to participate in any way they see fit.

“After a couple days of evaluation, coaches will be drafting teams looking to create as much balance as possible (grade, ability, etc.),” he said. “Our hope is to create team names, order team t-shirts, keep standings, and really making it a fun experience for everyone!”

“I do expect that we [will] have playoffs the final week,” Conroy added. In addition to faculty coaches, Conroy said that the league may have both student coaches and student officials.

A lot of students have signed up for the basketball league this winter from all different grades. After not being able to play organized games during the pandemic, this is a unique opportunity for Williston students.

Will Chalfant, a sophomore day student from Northampton, is choosing to play in the intramural basketball league.

“I chose to do it because any chance I can get to play basketball, I will take.” he said. “I am most excited about being able to play organized games, something I haven’t really been able to do since the pandemic started.”

While he’s excited to just get the chance to play again, he also has some high hopes for the league and thinks it could get really competitive.

“Playoffs and a championship at the end of the season would be a lot of fun and create some real competition between teams,” Will said.