
Occidental’s Intramural Sports League Commissioner Nasratullah Elham (senior) said he plans to make intramural sports activities mainstream. According to Elham, intramural sports are sports for students to participate in, regardless of their skill level or how much experience they have.
“If you’re just somebody who likes to play soccer, and you’ve barely played soccer in your life, intramural is your [go-to],” Elham said.
In the past, basketball and soccer were the only intramural sports offered. For this semester, volleyball and flag football are new additions, and Elham said Spikeball is also being considered based on students’ interest.

According to Elham, he wants to include intramurals at Occidental because he enjoys seeing students come together, build community and make friendships.
“On a surface sort of level, my job basically includes any sports that I’m given the responsibility to organize, and then organizing those on the websites, registering teams [and] making sure that the things we need are there,” Elham said. “But on a personal level, I feel the responsibility to have more people come out, and I think that’s what makes me, in my opinion, a good commissioner for the role.”
According to Elham, he hopes intramural sports can be improved by more budgetary support from Occidental’s athletic department. Currently, flag football and volleyball are each given five weeks of playtime, while basketball and soccer are given 10 weeks each.
“A lot of students would say that 10 weeks overall is not enough, and I think that’s fair, because a semester is longer than 10 weeks,” Elham said.
Yunyoung “Yuni” Chun (sophomore) and Aidan Saeed (junior) have already signed up for the newly added intramural sports.
According to Chun, she signed up for intramural volleyball. She played volleyball all four years of high school, mostly as a libero and defensive specialist.
Chun said she was searching for colleges that had an intramural volleyball team. When she came to Occidental, she said she was slightly disappointed that she did not have a place to play volleyball.
“I was really connected to my team,” Chun said. “And that was always something that I looked forward to.”
Chun said she is excited to have more opportunities to exercise and move around, especially because she believes it is difficult to exercise at Occidental.
“I think people kind of underestimate how the fun of playing the sport can make you motivated to get outside and exercise and do healthy things for yourself,” Chun said. “It’s definitely a good thing for colleges to bring intramural sports and make them accessible and have a bunch of different options.”
Chun said she wants to try out the setter position for this semester’s intramural volleyball.
Saeed, who also runs for Occidental’s track team, has been involved in intramural sports at Occidental since his first year, from basketball to soccer. He said he plans on competing in flag football this semester. Like Chun, he played basketball all four years of high school.
“I didn’t want to play basketball for the actual school, but I still wanted to enjoy competitive basketball,” Saeed said.
According to Saeed, what he really looks forward to when it comes to intramurals is relaxing and having fun.
“Sports has always been kind of a let-go of everything else,” Saeed said. “Just being able to get on the basketball court and exercise for hours — it doesn’t even feel like exercise.”
To increase students’ interest in sports and getting them more involved with intramurals, Saeed said he wishes Occidental would offer one-unit courses that teach students how to play sports. Saeed said this could additionally help students realize whether they truly enjoy the sport or not.
“I think a class would make people exercise more, as well as draw more attention to intramural[s] for people to come play,” Saeed said.
According to Saeed, he wanted to play football in high school but was worried about getting severe injuries such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)— a common brain disease among football players caused by constant head impacts.
“I never wanted to play a physical sport where it’s just about hitting each other,” Saeed said. “But flag football allows us to have the fun parts of football without the contact of it.”
Saeed said anyone interested or even thinking about joining intramural sports should go for it.
“There’s nothing wrong with putting yourself out there,” Saeed said. “If you’re worried about it, Elham’s a great commissioner. You can talk to him, or they can obviously reach out to me as well.”
According to Saeed, through playing intramural sports, students have the opportunity to build connections and meet people that they wouldn’t typically see around campus as much. Saeed said intramural sports are also very beneficial to students who have played sports throughout most of their high school career and are struggling to let go of that in college.
“I have friends who played basketball in high school, and they’re not necessarily happy with the way their high school basketball careers ended,” Saeed said.”So for them to be able to play [intramural basketball], it’s like they get a new chance.”
Contact Weiran Li at vli2@oxy.edu