Article written by Sasha Morsmith, Div Q President (2024)
The second ever Div Q 5v5 season ended on December 15th with River Valley Cup and Championship Playoff Games. The Grouches won the championship, completing a 9-0 undefeated season with their win over Homo Improvement. Earlier in the day, the Fighting Artichokes won the River Valley cup in a close 43-40 win again the Big Naturals, avenging a regular season loss by an identical score.
Organizing for the season began in the summer of 2024, with Sasha Morsmith (President & Referees), Brenan Hafner (Clerk & Captains), and Jen Markey (Registration & Score table) returning to the organizing team. They were joined by Phoebe Lamont (Treasurer) and Hannah Bevis (at-large). Mireille Bejjani led the social media team, and Gabi Fox took photos for the league social media. Like last year, all organizers were unpaid volunteers.
Opening registration day saw all 96 slots in the league fill up in only six hours, forcing the organizing committee to scramble to add more teams so that more players could participate in the league. Community members responded quickly to call more volunteers, allowing us to expand from 8 to 10 teams. We also organized a waitlist for the first time, allowing teams to more easily find replacements for injured players. In all, we had around 160 players participate in some fashion over the course of the season.
Referees received more extensive training as we moved to adopt the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) rules for basketball more thoroughly. The FIBA rules were selected because of their similarity to current WNBA, NCAA Women’s, and US High School rules, and wide availability of free training resources compared to those rulesets. The score-table improved its record keeping, allowing us to have more accurate information about games.
These improvements allowed us to spend more time on the court, stopping the clock for most pauses in play while fitting five games into an eight hour block. Teams scored 42.0 points per game on average, compared to 28.5 ppg last season.
This season, every team designed their own uniforms. Family and friends attended games to cheer on players, with Big Naturals and Homo Improvement bringing big crowds in particular. When I was refereeing the semi-final matchup between Homo Improvement and the Waitlisters, which went to overtime after Waitlisters mounted a double-digit 4th quarter comeback, the gym was so loud that it was hard for to hear the referee next to me during a time-out.
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