NC Double WOW!

I took a drive (A long damn drive) to Schenectady NY this past Saturday. My wife and I went to watch one of the athletes from our summer elite program, Jason Walters, play hockey. He plays for Union College. They have a Division I hockey team in the ECAC division. The game was impressive. Very fast, not chippy at all and squeezed into an intimate 2200 seat facility. It was great to finally see Jason play as we have worked with him for the past 2 summers and we know he's going to take his hockey career to next level. Oh yeah, they beat providence 4-2.

On Sunday morning, after breakfast we got a tour of the rink and the campus. The campus was nice, packed with history and great buildings, but the rink is the defiantely the centre piece.(In my opinion)

Messa Rink @ Union College

The dressing room had an NHL feel to it. Each player had a stall with all the equipment hung up on hardwood shelves. The floor was wide open with a huge "U" inlayed in the rubber matting. Across from the equipment stalls was a tiled bathroom shower area that looked like something from the newest YMCA or maybe even biggger. Around the corner on the way out to the players bench and ice was a wall of hockey sticks. And if you continued down the hall instead of heading out to the ice area the room opened up again (this is the impressive part) to host 2 power racks with platforms, 10 spinning bikes, a GHR and a Reverse hyper. Sweet set up
Jason was proud to add that his prowler was also kept in the dressing room gym area, thus making it the complete set up for any athlete or powerlifter. (not that any powerlifter will ever touch those bars and bumpers)

So, they have a crazy good set up right in the dressing room. But that's only in the dressing room. Downstairs underneath the ice surface, was a 2000sq foot room that looked kinda like a physio facility. It had 4 or 5 massage tables, ice baths, hot tubs, rehab equipment, electro stim machines, you name it, they had it. Just a sick set-up.

Across the hall from the physio room was the full weight room that is only used by the men's and women's hockey teams.

(pause for a deep breath)

It was about 4000sq feet. It had another row of spinning bikes, a bunch of jump boxes, a good stash of kettlebells, 5 double racks, 2 deadlift platforms, a full set of color coded bumpers for each rack and platform, another GHR, a crazy looking reverse hyper machine (that I took a shit on because it wasn't the west-side style) that was a cable and stack set up that somewhat resembled a lying leg curl (I was very un-impressed that they had this contraption, but at least they had a real one in the dressing room), a couple of pulldown cable stations and bunch of benches and DB's.

They've got 5 of these bad boys

This post has gotten way out of hand. Bottom line is the Div I NCAA schools have all the good shit, when it comes to training and sports facilities. It was very mind blowing.

I also carried 370 per hand farmer's walk handles on Saturday morning before heading out.