By Jeffrey James K. Erdely ’14
THE ROUNDUP
Mr. Matt Hooten coaches junior varsity basketball.
In his spare time he has fun playing intramural basketball against students.
“The fun is me reminding them before the game that if we lose I’ll just take 10 percent off their grade,” he said.
Mr. Hooten has been playing intramural sports at Brophy for all seven years he has worked here. Mr. Hooten is a history teacher and junior varsity basketball coach.
“I’ve done intramurals in previous years but as I’ve been here longer and I’ve gotten older the number of intramurals I’ve participate in have declined a little bit,” Mr. Hooten said. “When I first got here I did flag football, basketball, I did handball a couple times, but now it’s mostly just basketball.”
Brophy teachers have been a part of intramural sports for as long as they have been around, “Coach Cox, Coach Woods, Coach Kalkman and Mr. Munro played a couple games with us,” Mr. Hooten said. “I don’t remember our record. We might’ve lost one.”
Teachers usually dominate the basketball intramural scene.
“Four years I’ve been doing intramural sports. I’ve never beaten a teacher team,” said William Edwards ’14. “I’ve played with them though. We still lost. They needed a sub this year, a goalie, and we lost.”
The secret weapon for the teacher intramural basketball team success lies within Mr. Doug Cox.
“He scores about 99 percent of all our points,” Mr. Hooten said. “The rest of us kind of pitch in here and there…one of Mr. Cox’s strengths is his ability to score so everyone else sort of sets him up to do that.”
“Mr. Cox is really good,” Edwards said. “Like, stupid good. He’s such an athlete.”
The student-teacher bond is changed during this time. Some teachers play intramural sports for this exact reason.
“I think it’s fun for students to see us in a little bit of a different light,” Mr. Hooten said.
“Every time the students saw Mr. (John) Damaso come out and play they couldn’t believe that he was going to play basketball.” Mr. Hooten said. “And he’s actually a pretty good player. It was always fun for me to watch students begin to have maybe a more rounded look at who their teachers were.”
This sentiment is shared by students also.
“I think it humanizes the teachers a little bit more with an aspect that we can all relate, which is sports,” Edwards said. “I bet it gives them a pretty good release from grading and other matters such as that.”