Sports can form a great part of student life at many colleges and universities. After all, nobody can be expected to spend all their time on classes, studies, and homework for four years. (All work and no play, you might say, would make Johnnies dull.) Of course, St. John’s can’t be expected to do anything the same as other colleges! This is especially true of sports.

None of our sports teams require try-outs. All our sports are open to anybody who wants to give them a go. All freshmen at St. John’s are assigned to one of our intramural teams, no matter how many sports events they attend, or if they even attend any at all. We want to keep the option of participation even to those who are at first reluctant, and we want every Johnnie to feel part of intramural team spirit.

St. John’s intramurals offer a variety of more conventional sports and less conventional options. Conventional options include – among others – handball, soccer, basketball, table tennis, wrestling, and the free use of weights, exercise machines, and running track in the gyms. As for the more unusual offerings, this is where things get more interesting.

Have you ever dreamed of being an Ancient Greek warrior? A medieval knight? A sailor in the time of wooden ships? Of winning glory in Capture the Flag? Of learning what in the world Athenian Reasonball and Spartan Madball are? St. John’s can open up these opportunities for you! Among our intramural sports we offer such standouts as rowing, fencing, HEMA (historical European martial arts), and archery. We also offer an annual campus game of Capture the Flag, as well as two sports unique to St. John’s: Athenian Reasonball and Spartan Madball. (Reasonball is like flag football with a lot of extra rules, including the fairness rule, which ensures that the losing team is always given possession after a score, no matter which team scores. Spartan Madball is a once-yearly event experimenting with combining rules from several different sports.)

St. John’s adheres to the principles of such great ancient philosophers as Plato and Aristotle, in large part due to the emphasis our curriculum places on the classics and the study of Greek. These thinkers – who form such an essential part of the foundation of our curriculum, and our first two years of reading – emphasized the importance of maintaining and training a healthy body, as well as mind. You can find these words in printed-out articles stuck to the walls of the gyms on our campuses, reminding you of their purpose.

Not all Johnnies were great athletes in high school. Many were big readers growing up. Many of us dreamed of being just like the characters in our favorite books. For example, with the release of the new Percy Jackson show, there’s been much conversation among my fellow alumni and my coworkers (many of whom overlap) about how much we wished to attend Camp Half-Blood when we were younger, who our godly parent would have been, and other such topics.

It turns out, St. John’s was the closest we were ever going to get to Camp Half Blood. Our school color being the same orange, our curriculum revolving around the Ancient Greeks and Ancient Greek language, and also the variety of extracurriculars we have available.

We give our students the chance to try out fencing, archery, HEMA, rowing and canoeing, and a once-a-year campus-wide game of Capture the Flag. If you’ve ever dreamed of filling your days with Camp Half-Blood campers’ activities, the St. John’s intramural and extracurricular programs might be the opportunity of your dreams. Equally so if you’ve dreamed of being the protagonist of your own piece of heroic fantasy, complete with sword skills, archery, and friends and teammates by your side. (Fencing, croquet, sailing and rowing are also among the few sports in which we compete against other schools, for those Johnnies who crave success in a competitive environment.)

St. John’s allows all our students to be the protagonist of their own story, whatever that looks like. Our unique academic program combined with intramurals feeds the mind and body in ways that you may not have considered in high school. Come join us at Camp Johnnie!