It’s a quarter after 5 a.m. and Diego Olague is already on his feet, getting ready for the early shift at the UTPA Wellness Center. He’s groggy. His insomnia kept him up last night past three, and the two hours of sleep he got will have to get him through the end of the shift at 10, classes until five in the afternoon, and will also have to him alert through responsibilities as captain of an intramural basketball team.
Olague would easily be forgiven for being cranky. Yet, his demeanor is upbeat, friendly and optimistic. His humor is especially evident in his team’s name: Vicious and Delicious.
“None of us is particularly vicious or delicious, but we all try to live up to that standard,” Olague said, the smile audible in his voice between chuckles.
This isn’t the first comical name the team has given themselves. Two years ago they were the Jalapeno Hotties, and before that they called themselves Nickolicious, after one of their players, who had not attended the university for a year, returned. When the team played dodge ball they were Norfolk-in-chance (read aloud quickly for full comic effect).
“We all have a pretty good sense of humor,” said Olague, a kinesiology major who graduated from Edinburg North in 2004. “There are a lot of teams with kind of generic sounding names and we’re just trying to separate ourselves and be original.”
The team has a reason for wanting to sound unique. For the last five years, they have been UTPA’s top intramural basketball team, winning tournaments around the area, including the Valley Bowl, a tournament played between the top teams from the four colleges in the Valley, multiple times.
“We joke around a lot, but we don’t take our games lightly,” Olague said. “The other teams know that we’ll buckle down and win a game.”
Olague knows that this kind of seriousness is necessary, especially this season, when close to 30 teams have signed up. The high number of teams has pushed the intramural directors into dividing the teams into Tuesday and Wednesday leagues. Play begins Nov. 11.
“There’s a lot of interest this year,” Intramural Assistant Art Cabrera said. “A lot of these guys are fresh out of high school and still have that competitive edge. A lot of them played high school basketball and for one reason or another aren’t playing on the Broncs basketball team.”
Olague, who joined the team when he was freshman and has been a member for the last five years, is fully aware of the talent present on other units.
“I can’t say for sure that we’ll come out on top this year,” he said. “I’ve seen some of the other guys and I know they’re good.”
For the last three years, the team No Love, composed of former EHS basketball player have played against Olague’s team in the championship game. His optimism, however, still shines through as his team enters its first game of the season on Nov.11.
“Although we don’t have size on our team, we have a lot of hustle. There’s a lot of runners and shooters on our side,” Olague said.
“We’ve been playing together for a long time. We know each other well, and even though we don’t really practice, we know what we need to do.”
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