By JESSE PARHAM
Reporter
(WARRENSBURG, Mo., digitalBURG) — Teamwork and sportsmanship seem to be important lessons while playing a sport of any kind, but what if someone did not play on a professional level but still wanted to play on a team? Well, perhaps the intramural program would be for them.

Intramural sports are games played by regular people that sign up for the season and make their own teams. Intramural derives from the Latin word intramuros, which means within walls, which is fitting since intramurals consist of games and matches between teams of people from within the walls of institutions, educational and otherwise.
Recently, the Transformation, Health, Responsibility, Independence, Vocation, and Education program on campus made a team called the THRIVE Buddies, who have played three games so far this semester.
Jordan Gosch, coach of THRIVE Buddies and senior sports management major, volunteers with the intramural program and said he enjoys the family feel of the team.
“The goal is obviously to help other people and make them into teams, not just on the field but off it too,” Gosch said. “It is a big part of being in a sport – any sport – that you’re building the skills to interact with other people.”
Gosch said he enjoyed working with the intramural program, believing that it was beneficial for all parties involved – for him, the THRIVE program and for the intramural program. The intramural program is what Gosch said gives him hands-on experience with his major. It became a unique opportunity for Gosch to help coach the THRIVE team because he has a family member that also had a disability, saying that he could understand the problems the THRIVE students would have while training them to be  a team.
Brianna Kohenskey, captain of the THRIVE Buddies, and Michael Day, the co-captain, said the team is having fun playing softball as one large group of friends.
“(I) thought (organizing a team) would be a good experience and get everybody involved in something that we could all be a team as and just being together out on the field,” Day said.
Kohenskey and Day said THRIVE is a good program because of how accepting it is – how the whole program feels like one big family. They said the softball teams organized by the intramural program run in much the same way as THRIVE Buddies: it’s just one big happy family.
Kohenskey and Day said playing in the intramurals allows them to prove to others and themselves that they were just like everybody else – having fun when they could and juggling that with real life and school work.
Day and Kohenskey said each person was chosen for either their skills or just because they wanted to have fun with their friends – it was not about winning or losing for this team – it was just having a good time and being on a team.