Originating from the Portuguese “futebol de salão” and the Spanish “fútbol de salon” meaning “hall football,” futsal is a modified version of football that is usually played indoors on a smaller field. It is played between two teams, each of which contains five players, including the goalkeeper, and it calls for improvisation, creativity and the ball-controlling skills that are needed in football as well.

KAIST’s futsal club Aquila is the largest futsal or football club in KAIST with over 90 members and more than 10 years of history. Though best known as a futsal club, Aquila originally started as a football club. Now, it holds both futsal and football tournaments for KAIST students as well as for students from many other universities in Daejeon. The club holds its regular practice every Wednesday morning from 7 to 9 and plays futsal games every Friday evening from 7 to 9. During the weekends they often have friendly matches with teams from neighboring universities in Daejeon.

This year, Aquila opened its first intramural futsal tournament at KAIST. The preliminary matches were held from April 21 to 22, and the finals were held on the 23rd. Any undergraduate or graduate students at KAIST were allowed to participate as a team of five to seven members, one of whom is the goalkeeper. In order to enter the tournament, applicants had to download the application form from its Cyworld club, fill it out and post it online. Each team had to pay an entry fee of 50,000 Korean Won.

The KAIST Herald met Donggeun Oh, the Chief of the Planning Committee for the Aquila Tournament.

Nice to meet you. Could you please introduce yourself?
Hello, my name is Donggeun Oh, and I am a senior majoring in Mechanical Engineering. I have always played soccer as a hobby, and was introduced to futsal only a few years ago. Currently, I am the trainer for Aquila, a futsal group on campus. For our upcoming Aquila Tournament, I accepted the job as Chief of the Planning Committee.

Is Aquila an official student club? How did the organization begin?
Right now, Aquila is at pending status, and is waiting to be confirmed as an official KAIST club. Aquila initially started out at ICU about ten years ago with a group of people who were passionate about futsal that gathered to play together. When ICU and KAIST merged, Aquila still remained among students as their hobby, until recently when we decided to try to change our status to that of an official club. The word “Aquila” refers to a constellation which means eagle in Latin.

For those who are not familiar with sports, could you explain briefly what futsal is?
The easiest way to understand futsal is to think of it as “mini soccer.” Whereas soccer has eleven players on each team, there are only five players in futsal, including goalkeepers. The official rules of the two sports are similar but differ slightly. I would say that futsal is not as rough as soccer is.

Moreover, futsal is typically played indoors, though we are holding the Aquila Tournament outdoors due to the location of the KAIST futsal fields. Each game usually lasts only about fifteen to twenty minutes. However, it would be difficult to play each game for longer than that since futsal involves a lot of intense running.

How does Aquila recruit its members?
Currently, there are around fifty members in Aquila, including two foreigners. The official recruitment periods for new members are at the beginning of each semester, but we are always looking for new members. If anyone is willing to join, they are always welcome.

Can you explain how Aquila created this tournament?
Last year, we organized a futsal tournament which was a large-scale event held all over the city of Daejeon. This very first Aquila Tournament, known as “Freestyle Football,” was organized with the purpose of publicizing our futsal group. The tournament ended up having a total of around 130 futsal teams located in various universities in Daejeon, including Chungnam National Universiy and Hanbat National University. Through online registration, around 5,000 players signed up and participated in this tournament.

After having organized such a big event successfully, we decided to have a similar tournament but limit it to KAIST students only. We hope that this opportunity will bring KAIST students together and also contribute to making Aquila an official club at KAIST.

Were all Aquila members involved in creating the tournament?
Like any other club, Aquila has its leaders, including the president and vice-president. Right now, I am the trainer for Aquila. The organization is a bit different for the Aquila Tournament. On the planning board for the tournament, there are about twenty students involved. They belong to different subdivisions such as Public Relations Team and Management Team. Other Aquila players also help out with the tournament by, say, officiating the games as referees.

As busy KAIST students, how difficult was it to organize such events?
As I have said before, we have already done a similar project last year and it was quite successful. Also, the organizing committee mostly consists of seniors who have been around the school for years. Not only are they experienced, but they are also familiar with the detailed steps of arranging tournaments and competitions.
One difficulty would be that sometimes it is hard as leaders to guide the younger players. For example, the freshmen are not sure how to carry out some of the events so they need a lot of input from the upperclassmen.

How will the tournament be carried out?
The event will be held throughout three days from April 21 to 23. We have a total of 32 teams signed up, organized into eight groups with four teams each. There will be preliminary rounds for the first two days in order to narrow down the teams. We follow the traditional tournament format so that 32 teams compete for the title through a three-day-long elimination process.

The final game will be held on the Monday, which falls nicely on the first day of the Spring Festival. We thought this would further help publicize Aquila to the KAIST community.

Any final comments?
We are still not sure whether Aquila will be certified as an official club at KAIST, though we certainly hope so. Nevertheless, this group will always be around for those really passionate about futsal and also those who want to just have some fun. We hope this tournament can spark the participants’ and other KAIST students’ interest in Aquila and the sport itself.