Farmville is rich with intercollegiate athletics, but it is also a hub of intramural athletics, and it is in this latter category that one will discover the Farmville Cup — a unique event that brings the two-college town together.

“It was originally started in 2009 by Robbie Bell, from Longwood, and Ricky Talman, from Hampden-Sydney,” said Robert Stevens, coordinator of sports programs in Longwood University’s Intramurals and Campus Recreation Department. “And they were friends and had talked about doing something between the two schools, decided that the winners of the intramural championships for flag football and basketball at each school would play each other for a trophy that would stay with whoever won the game for each semester.”

The 2018 flag football Farmville Cup took place Oct. 25 at Lancer Park and featured two fraternity teams. Sigma Chi of Hampden-Sydney College (H-SC) advanced through the 12-team field at H-SC to reach the Cup and face Phi Kappa Tau, which advanced through the 10-team field at Longwood. Sigma Chi ended up winning 28-18 in front of a crowd that Stevens said included well more than one hundred people.

Stevens said he would like to think H-SC quarterback Niko Thurman was the game’s MVP, leading his team in both rushing and passing.

The tradition of the Farmville Cup stopped for a couple of years, but Stevens helped bring it back when he came back last fall.

“It’s always a friendly rivalry between the two schools,” he said, and the participants are not intercollegiate athletes but simply students looking for athletic opportunities at a level that is less time-intensive.

H-SC Club and Intramural Sports Director Matt Griswold, who thanked Longwood for hosting the latest Cup, said those competing in it and the intramural leagues can “still have fun, recreational, competitive times with their friends and classmates and without it being the time commitment that a varsity sport would be.”