Isabel Pheifer—Staff Writer

Every sports requires skill and athleticism. But some people, no matter how badly they want to possess these abilities, just never will. So, what do you do when you desperately want to succeed in sports, but just don’t have what it takes? 

You don’t hit the court, you hit fantasy sports. This is where the real competition takes place. You take your knowledge and love of the game to battle against your buddies with the best athletes in the world. You can also study players and statistics to ensure that you can make money moves on draft night.

So, how do fantasy sports work? To start, you join either a private league with people you know or a public league with strangers. Once you join a league, you choose real players to add to your team in an online draft, which happens before the season of that respective sport starts.

 The real battling begins when you match up against someone in your league for the week. The points you earn for your team are based on your players’ real-game statistics. The better your players perform, the more points you earn. You can switch your roster during each weekly matchup, picking up and trading players as the season goes on. 

Currently, the sports available are football, basketball, and hockey.

There are millions of people around the globe who take part in fantasy sports. In a study done by the NCAA, the governing body found that over 70 percent of NCAA athletes participate in at least one fantasy sport. Dordt University is no different than these schools. There are many students here on campus who are active participants in the fantasy sports world. 

“Fantasy basketball keeps me engaged with the NBA season,” senior civil engineering major, Parks Brawand, said. “It also provides a nice 1.5 second break from vigorous homework, all before hitting the books again.” 

Whether you are a basketball fanatic or not, you can succeed in a fantasy league. Some may say it is all about the luck of the draw, and others may say it takes skill to win a fantasy game. From the process of finding other dedicated participants to be in your league to coming up with a clever name for your league, there is a lot that goes into fantasy sports. 

The more seriously you take it, the more rewards you will reap. If you are an active manager, you can convert your previous knowledge of the sport and turn it into making important managing decisions. You can trade players, drop players, and pay close attention to what moves need to be made for each matchup. 

Another way to succeed is to truly be engaged in each matchup. Because of this, you may come to love and cheer for certain players and teams that you never thought possible. 

Fantasy sports encompass all that a real game does. When you win, there is a sense of pride and accomplishment that comes with it. When you lose, there is despair, pain, maybe even tears. Sometimes there is just no way to succeed and your players do not perform the way you had envisioned. 

“Fantasy sports is just another reminder to me that when you try to succeed in this world, all your hopes and dreams get dashed into pieces,” senior mechanical engineering major, Chase Pheifer, said. 

The amount of pride you feel after getting a big win in your week of fantasy is worth the sheer amount of blood, sweat, and tears you pour into your team each week. For some, fantasy is exciting, and they are successful beyond belief. For others, winning a game of fantasy just never happens. 

Fantasy sports are truly a fantasy. A world where super teams are the new normal, where Lebron James and Stephen Curry share the

  court, and where having Tom Brady does not guarantee you a win. In Fantasy, anything can happen. It can even make you believe that one day your name will be an option for the court. 

“Seeing LeBron or Harden have a big fantasy game also motivates me on the court,” Brawand said. “Maybe one day I’ll be a hooper like them, you know?”