[QUOTE]A) Obviously the gym (weight/cardio room) here is terrible, and about 1/4 the size needed for a school of 20k+ people. I think I read this was currently in discussion… anyone know what the latest on a new gym possibility is?[/QUOTE]
Before the SAC opened in 96, we had the weight room in the bottom of Belk Gym to service 15,000 students!
[QUOTE]B) Basketball courts. If you play at night it’s often difficult to ever get a court on the weekend indoors in belk or the sac. I played a lot last year on the outdoor courts beside RDH last night even though they were complete garbage, but they had lights. They FINALLY put up new backboards/rims this past semester. I live in Phase III though, so it’s still a good walk since it’s only one court and may be taken. There are courts beside Martin, I think 2 court areas. There’s room there for more goals I believe paved, but there aren’t any. This would be great… however there are no lights. Come on? Most people have classes during the day… why have unlit courts? I e-mailed rec-services about this a while ago about the poor RDH courts and lack of lighting, which was about a week before they put up new goals at RDH, but nothing was done about lighting.[/QUOTE]
The budget that Rec Services has is VERY tight. The monies are allocated according to how much participation each area (intramurals, club sports, aquatics, rec facilities, etc.) has. It may seem like alot of people play pickup basketball, but when you compare that to intramurals or club sports, it really doesn’t compare. For this reason, the amount of money allocated for things like sand volleyball courts or outdoor basketball courts isn’t anywhere near what it needs to be to even think about covering the cost for installing lights for outdoor courts.
[QUOTE]C) Soccer. I know the front fields are torn up now, but we have decent fields down at the engineering buildings. I think there’s only two goals there right now… and they’re locked together. Why not let people play on them? There’s only one indoor court here for soccer… which is in the belk and basically a basketball court. They don’t loan out indoor balls, and I asked Mr. Holt (director of rec services/intermural) about it, and they can’t afford to loan out balls because they don’t have enough and break easily. Fine, we could buy our own ball right? Wrong apparently. My friend went out to buy one and I noticed the goals were locked facing the wall. I went back and ask Mr. Holt if they can unlock them so we could practice (we play intermural indoor soccer currently) and he said they don’t allow that, and if we want to play we have to play without goals. So basically with all the fields and space we have at UNCC, we have to go play at the TERRIBLE fields at the Mallard Creek park.[/QUOTE]
Before the rec field complex was built behind the baseball stadium, the options for playing on an outdoor field were even more limited. You had the front field, the field that was inside the old track (no longer there), and two fields adjacent to the Fieldhouse. There were soccer goals set up for people to use, but non-students would come on campus to use them, thus tearing up the equipment. These non-students, as well as students would also go out and use the fields when they were still wet after a rain. They would tear up the field, causing intramural and club sports games to be postponed, as well as causing the Grounds Dept. to spend money and time (when the fields would be closed) to repair them. All of the money for repairs to fields and equipment came out of the budget of Rec Services. Guess where the money comes from for the Rec Services Budget? You got it - your tuition. So, in order to keep the amount of money asked for from each student each year to a minimum, actions had to be taken to ensure that the students got adequate fields to play on, thus the locking of the goals on the outdoor fields. I can’t really comment on the goals inside Belk Gym, but again, there is no one there to monitor the usuage of the goals, and the money is not in the budget to replace the goals should they get damaged during open play.
Again I don’t know if any of this is in the works currently, I’m not up to date with everything. I know I’d rather have some decent rec areas than a new student union though.[/QUOTE]
Believe me, the folks that run Rec Services go to bat for the students each and every year when it comes to asking for more money for new and different programs, as well as asking for increased facility usage time that has to be split between Athletics, Rec Services, Rec Facilities, and the Kinesiology Dept. They also beg and plead for more recreational facilities each time that long term planning is discussed for the university.