A group of graduate students who devote countless hours of research to their field may not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of Intramural Sports players.  However, for PhD graduate student and team captain of The Blasters Chris Evelyn, Intramural Basketball is an important part of balancing studies with play.  Evelyn earned his masters at UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science and is now in his fourth year in the department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology researching the evolution of salamander species in California.

“[I’m] trying to get a handle on what it takes to develop and complete an original research project at a high level,” he said. “As any graduate student can tell you, this is a long road often full of setbacks and a lot of lessons learned.”

On the court, his team is providing the lessons. The Blasters are currently 3-0 in the MA-1 league, winning by an average of almost 40 points per game. However, the team is not playing for wins and losses.

“We just want one good game a week,” Evelyn said. “We look forward to playing hard.”

Evelyn played at Loyola Marymount for four years, walking on as a freshman and eventually getting a scholarship as a senior. Other grad students on the team with prior playing experience are Finn Rebassoo from Occidental College, Justin Clark from Iowa, Jason Green from Northern Oklahoma College, Mollique Johnson from Southern Connecticut State, and William Clay from Mississippi Valley State. Duncan Kennedy and Chris Burton, the only undergraduates on the team, played in high school.

Rebassoo was named the 2003 outstanding male senior scholar-athlete at Occidental.  Rebassoo finished second on Occidental’s all-time scoring list with 1,562 career points and was the 2003 Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Player of the Year.

Evelyn also explained how he isn’t the only one with a PhD research project. Rebassoo is working on an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, Clark is completing research on Socratic philosophy, and Clay recently finished a project on Boolean networks in mathematics.

“You wouldn't necessarily know that they also excel on the basketball court,” Evelyn admitted.

This group of students came to form an impressive team simply by playing in the Rec Cen on a regular basis.

“There has been a pretty consistent group of undergraduate and graduate students who play in the Rec Cen the past few years,” Evelyn said. “Our team is really just a group of great people who are all unselfish players. It's great to run around with a group of guys who just love to play ball and really know how to play.”

Despite their full schedules as grad students, the team understands that participating in sports is important to make time for.

“IM's and playing basketball in the Rec Cen have been great ways to build community with undergraduate students and other graduate students,” Evelyn said. “Many graduate students don't do too much besides study during the week so the social aspect of seeing the same group of guys each day has been great. It also helps my mental health to get some exercise each day and leave the stresses of the day behind for an hour or two.”

Despite frequently playing together in the Rec Cen, this is the first quarter they formed an Intramural Basketball team.

“We all know each other and this year we decided it would be fun to form a graduate student team before a few of us finish here at UCSB,” Evelyn said. “Clark, Rebassoo, Clay, and I have known each other for years so it's surprising we didn't do this before now.”

Playing Intramural Sports has proven to be a good decision for them.

“It's fun for all of us to get together and play in a different setting compared to our daily runs in the Rec Cen,” he said. “It’s fun for us to play with more structure.”

The team plays so well together thanks in part to practicing together on Saturday mornings.

“We made it out a couple of times but it's been tough,” Evelyn said. “School or life has gotten in the way the last couple weeks but hopefully we can get out there again soon.”