Buried toward the bottom of the intramural basketball men's recreational division at Southeast Missouri State University sits a team known as "The Has Beens." What makes this team different from the six other teams competing for intramural dominance is that this team is not composed of students. This team is made up of Southeast football coaches, a Southeast baseball coach and staff from the department of athletics.
"We're all old, washed up former players," Kent Phillips, coordinator of event and management facilities of Southeast athletics, said about the team's name.
The name is also a nod to the fact the team played two years ago and had the same name.
The original "Has Beens" competed two years ago, but a majority of those players left Southeast. Both Seeman and Phillips were on that team and decided to get a new band of teammates together this year.
"It was kind of all of our idea," Seeman said. "We play a staffers-interns basketball game, and we decided we were going to make an intramural team. It's good exercise for us, we're getting old. It's just a way for us to exercise, to have a little fun."
The team never practices. Phillips and Seeman both said that the members are too old to practice and that practice isn't required for intramurals.
"There's a few of us who've played together," Seeman said. "We'll just go up to the rec, but you know with everyone's different schedule, with the football coaches, the baseball coaches. So we haven't all gotten together a lot to play, we haven't gotten in sync."
Since everyone on the team has a membership to the Student Recreation Center-North, they are allowed to play against current students at Southeast. "The Has Beens" age has not helped, as they sit in fifth place out of seven teams in the recreational division with a 1-2 record.
"It's probably different for the students to see a bunch of old guys out there," Seeman said. "I mean we're not extremely old, but just different when they're expecting to play some students then we show up."
The team's youngest player is 22-year-old Ricky Zum Mallen, a graduate assistant to Southeast's athletics' marketing and promotions department. Michael Adamson is the lone Southeast baseball coach on the team, while Nick Stauffer and Tyler Hennes are the Southeast football coaches on the team. Nate Saverino, coordinator for marketing and promotions, completes the seven-man roster.
As the youngest player on the team, Zum Mallen has the most responsibility.
"The guys were talking about putting a team together, and I wanted to be apart of it," Zum Mallen said. "Since I'm the youngest, they made me the team captain and in charge of everything."
Phillips is the oldest person on the team but declined to reveal his actual age.
"We find that younger teams, they like to run it," Phillips said. "They run a lot more and play a lot more defense. We play a half-court style. We don't have many fast breaks."
Phillips and Seeman agreed that their team mostly plays zone defense as opposed to man-to-man. With a zone, players are responsible with defending a certain area on the floor rather than keeping up with one person.
"We've had a few fast-break buckets, but not too many," Seeman said. "We get caught up from behind pretty quick."
"The Has Beens" play mostly for fun. Their last game of the season is on Feb. 13. Win or lose, they will more than likely be in the intramural playoffs since their sportsmanship rating is 4.5 out of five. To make the playoffs, team records do not matter. A sportsmanship rating of 3.5 is needed to make it into the playoff bracket.
"You get to go play with your boys, have a good time," Phillips said. "It's good exercise, and we get to pretend that we're younger than we really are."
Phillips also had some advice for the "The Has Beens" opponents.
"Take it easy on us," Phillips said. "We're old."
