By Andrew Browning
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At 5 feet, 6 inches and 130 pounds, there’s little question that senior Nicky Ramakrishnan is too small to play football and isn’t tall enough to make the basketball team. But he has been very much involved in those two sports every year of high school. Ramakrishnan has been a member of the Fantasy Sports Club ever since his freshman year, and this year he became co-president.

Ramakrishnan said the club has seen a drop in participation due to the change from football to basketball season, but he doesn’t expect it to last long. “We only have one basketball league with 10 people in that, but once March madness comes we should get a lot more players,” he said.

Although the stereotype of a fantasy manager is often someone with no athletic ability who never leaves his computer screen, Ramakrishnan said he still enjoys playing sports with his friends. In fact, he said he even prefers the actual sports to their fantasy counterparts.

“I played intramural basketball, and with friends I play football and baseball and stuff like that,” he said. “I like both (fantasy and playing sports), but I’d probably lean a little towards actually playing it. I like to be outside and do stuff.”

In addition, Mike Meyer, club sponsor and special services teacher, started the group in 2004 and said he always has kids from a number of different backgrounds and social groups join the organization.

“I find that almost invariably there’s all types of kids. I’ll have competitive athletes, I’ll have kids that are very studious, I’ll have kids that are just sports fans,” Meyer said. “And this year at our call-out we’ve had the most females actually joining. Last year was my first female and this year I believe we are up to four females, which is shattering the record right now.”

Ramakrishnan said it’s hard to know how many individuals are in the club at one time, but more kids usually show up during football drafts. “We had a call-out meeting in early September and we had 25 kids there, but we have some people that didn’t show up to the call-out meeting show up to the live drafts,” he said. “To give you a little perspective, we had two live football drafts and we had about 20 people doing the live drafts and then another 10 to 12 doing an online draft.”

Meyer said membership increases during the year, which gives the club an opportunity to participate in a wider variety of fantasy games. “Obviously the more numbers the more leagues we can have,” Meyer said. “Right now with about 40 or 50 kids there’s varied interest so we’ll have the big three (football, basketball and baseball), but we don’t have sports like NASCAR or golf. If you have a larger group maybe you can get these more obscure fantasy sports.”

Meyer said he will get in on the action if a league needs an additional member, but over the years he said he’s found that the club members are trustworthy enough to maintain responsible leagues without his supervision.

“I do at times (play in the leagues) if they need me,” Meyer said. “When I first started it I used to just to kind of monitor it, but I find that most Carmel kids are genuinely good kids and I don’t have to worry about trash talking or gambling or anything that’s inappropriate for high school behavior. And the more and more I watch these kids, the more and more I realize they don’t need me to be involved, unless just for a numbers standpoint if you need even teams I’ll jump in.”

Whether battling it out in a league with his club sponsor or the general public, Ramakrishnan said that for him the most enjoyable part of fantasy sports is the new aspects of the games that he can absorb.“It’s just another way to learn more about the game and learn about the stats,” Ramakrishnan said. “It’s another way to look at the sport.”