The spring’s final team sport, intramural softball, will begin tournament play April 19.

This year, a total of 36 teams will compete for the softball crown; men’s teams account for more than double the number of women’s teams, 25-11.

Most social clubs, with the exception of a couple, have entered more than one team in each league this semester, which is not unusual. The Trojans social club has two teams: the Trojans and the Trojaneros. The Trojaneros are the social club’s recreational team.

“I expect the Trojans to have a very powerful offense,” said Cody Bowden, sophomore information systems major of Crowley. “I expect we will be able to score at will.”

The softball season is considerably shorter than that for most intramural sports. With most sports getting four to five weeks of play time, softball has a mere three, the same as soccer. Teams will play only two games the first week, and after that, they will play two weeks of single elimination games leading up to the Rec and Champ league championships.

More popular intramural sports, such as waterball, are one major contributor to the shortened length of the softball season. The waterball season, in a sense, takes extra time that softball and soccer could be using. With the elimination of waterball, we could see lengthier seasons for basketball, softball and soccer. Chances are very high that waterball will be eliminated from intramural sports next year. However, to sink waterball would benefit the other sports that have shorter seasons because of it.

“We are about 99.9 percent sure that we will not have waterball next year,” said Mark Jackson, assistant director of intramural sports. “This will allow a spring sport to be moved to the fall to allow longer and more competitive seasons.”

Kenli Edwards, intramurals director, said waterball is the secondmost popular sport to play and watch, after flag football. However, construction on the Royce and Pam Money Student Recreation and Wellness Center has put the swimming pool out of commission for now.

“We won’t have a pool here at ACU, and it’s a big liability if we play elsewhere,” Edwards said.

Waterball fans shouldn’t despair, though. Edwards said the intramural office plans to reinstate the sport after the completion of the SRWC.