There are many sports offered at the Student Recreation Center on Eastern’s campus like basketball, volleyball and bowling, but for others flag football is the most fun and important.

Intramural flag football first started for the fall 2011 semester on Oct. 10, 2001.

The teams play a five game schedule, and then qualify for the playoffs if they win three games and also have a sportsmanship rating of 3.0.

Dominique Penrose, a freshman biological science major, is very excited about her first game with her flag football team, the Panthers.

“I love football,” Penrose said.

She doesn’t know the rules of football other than she cannot touch anyone, but said she loves watching it. Penrose is the quarterback of her team.

Her team was scheduled to make their debut on Thursday, October 13, but that was the same day as the beginning of fall break so the team they were scheduled to play forfeited. Her team plays on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7 p.m. and practices for an hour or two before their games in fields behind Lawson Hall.

Penrose said the worst part about playing flag football is that she has to play with the girls.

“Playing with a bunch of females, they complain too a lot, their nails, hair, their tired of running, girl stuff,” Penrose said.

Rauvon Gaston, a senior kinesiology-sports management major, has been playing flag football for a few years now at Eastern.

“I do it just to do something and to keep me active,” Gaston said.

Gaston plays on the offensive line and as a receiver for his team, Put on the Belt.

“I’ve been playing football since I was young so it’s a stress relief,” said Gaston, who played football for Belleville East High School.

Gaston said the referees do a good job letting the teams play compared to fall 2010 when he felt they threw flags for every little thing. He said they could also start the sport a little earlier in the semester so that it isn’t so cold outside.

“Just the football environment just kind brings back moments back from high school,” Gaston said.

Not everyone is happy with flag football like Sterling Purvis, a sophomore applied engineering technology major.

“I dislike the rules, it involved little to no contact, I feel like it stripped the fun out of football,” Purvis said.

Purvis isn’t playing this semester because of his experience in the fall of last year.

“I had some fun, but didn’t enjoy it as much because of my team,” Purvis said. “They sucked and we had no good chemistry, it was terrible.”

Purvis said his team, Covenant, couldn’t play their first game because not enough people came, then the next two games they played without scoring at all in either game. After that, Purvis said no one showed up anymore.

“Depending on the players, I would consider playing again in the fall 2012,” Purvis said.

Nick Blankenship can be reached at 581-7942 or nrblankenship@eiu.edu.