UTSC has a golf cage? Really? Squash too?

Hello sports fans! This is Raphael back for Friday’s blog and your weekly dosage of UTSC news.  This week I’m going to mix it up, go into Jessica’s territory (our Tuesday Athletics blogger) and talk about sports! More specifically, the underutilized facilities that are available at UTSC. Now for some of our dedicated readers, you may remember a past blog I did about the Attic.  I love the Attic and it is probably my favorite “chill” spot on the campus. I guess this next spot I will mention is a close second place. Now I don’t go as often as I used to but this spot is great because so little of the student population know about it.

Alright so let’s get right into it: The golf cage at UTSC is nothing too special. For those of us who don’t know what a golf cage is, it's basically a 3 sided net where you would take swings with the club to practice your posture and accuracy.

Now as you guys can probably tell I love to explore places, I guess that’s why most of my blogs have some relation to looking or finding some new places and this golf cage is the perfect spot.

The golf cage at UTSC is not very large, but they do have free golf clubs you can use at any time. What's even better is if you start to take a liking to golf (such as myself) the Athletics Center offers classes to improve your golf game. Just visit their website www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~athletics for more information.

Now I won't be surprised if many of you haven't even heard of a golf cage, but I'm sure that some of you heard about the squash courts at UTSC. For those of you who don't let me tell you all about it.

The squash courts (as shown below) is available throughout the day (and they are usually empty during the day since many students have classes).

I still remember playing squash for the first time with one of my friends. We were in first year, just exploring what UTSC had to offer for us. We had just finished class and wanted to check out the gym, but we got sidetracked and took a door to our left instead. We walked the long hallway and ended up in the squash rooms! We really had no idea that the campus had squash, and at first we thought that the squash room was a mini basketball court (until we saw there was no hoop or net). I told my friend, "Hey why don't we try playing squash? I mean it shouldn't be too hard, right?" WRONG! The problem we had going into playing squash was we had no idea on what the rules were. After just half an hour running back and forth whacking the ball against the wall, we were EXHAUSTED! I mean really tired. Granted neither of us are real "athletes" but we felt so winded after that we just sat on the court for half an hour just to catch our breath. Upon leaving the court, we notice that right outside the door there were billboards that had the rules of squash written out! We were so tired that we decided to just go home.

(Note: for those of you who want to take up a sport and feel your body moving, take up squash. This is made easier because our school provides lessons for both beginners and advanced players. For those of you who want to see the offered lessons, download this pdf file: http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~athletics/images/fallguide.pdf)

So that was my experience, please don't be discouraged by my experience in the court, I actually am genuinely interested in the sport, and would like to revisit it sometime (maybe after I hit the gym a little more). And for those of you who think squash really isn't your thing, try out golf. I came into it not knowing if I would like it or not, but golf is a great stress reliever. Just whacking the ball with a club against a net can feel really good (especially if you just want to relieve some anger from missing your bus, or messing up on your test). And if you are lazy and just want to sit and watch, there are benches located at the upper floor of the squash area, convenient for those who would prefer watching others move around as opposed to themselves. :)

The squash and golf cage rooms are located by taking the door to your left (before the locker room or the gym). If you see a dance studio then you are headed the right way, just keep following the hallway and you'll get there eventually.

Oh, before I forget, Happy Belated Birthday to our supervisor Nadia Rosemond, without you as our leader, we would be hopelessly lost with our blogs :)