Gym Time: Separate Students and Varsity Athletes?
Roger Devora
Going to the gym can have us feeling great and ready for more exercise. Sometimes the gym has too many of us feeling good so the machine we’re waiting for turns into a 30 minute long wait. Here on the Western Washington Campus we have two gym facilities, so why not head over to the other one and try your luck there? Wait! Hold on. One of the two facilities is designated for “varsity athletes” only: The Parberry Ridge Gym. All other students go to the Wade King Recreation Center. Is this really necessary though? In this review I will juxtapose the Ridge Gym and the Rec Center and the purposes they serve to figure whether varsity athletes should have their own facilities here at Western Washington University.
Parberry Ridge
The Parberry Ridge gym is physically a part of what is known as “The Ridgeway Commons”, a shared space between the tenants of the area. To get here, you must take a series of steep steps through a hilly forest. Once reached, you’ll realize the Ridge Gym is only a temporary location while the main gym, Carver Gym, is under renovation. As you go inside the small gym, you will see four benches, free weights, a leg press, five cardio machines and a couple other pieces of equipment. As you go left you will see a few steps that take you to the higher part of the gym that has all six weight platforms used for bench press, dead lifts, power cleans, that sort of thing.
Wade King
Students that are not varsity athletes are able to use the Rec Center as a way of working out, going swimming or joining a fitness class. The Wade King Rec Center can easily be found on the main path past South Campus near the largest student parking lot. When entering this gym you will find a nice lounge area and a refreshing smoothie and supplement shop. Past the front counter you can experience Western’s rock wall, a pool/hot tub area, showers, two weight rooms, an indoor track, several fitness class rooms and an enormous cardio area. Did I mention hot tub?
Why Not Both?
Some people may be wondering why these gyms aren’t both available to all students. Most colleges with an athletics program happen to have an entirely separate facility for the athletes. It’s not uncommon for these facilities to be exclusive, especially in Division 1 schools. Western Washington University is a Division 2 school, so some things may be less exclusive, but there is still a divide.
Is this divide justified? As a worker here at the Parberry Ridge Gym I have noticed that teams get really close to each other (literally) when training together. Athletes chat and joke between sets and during breaks. If the athletes were forced to train at the Rec Center, they might be more spread out and might not all get in the same work out in the same time frame.
If regular students wanted to work out at the Ridge Gym, they wouldn’t find everything needed because of limited machines and equipment. Waiting times would be awful. The sheer size of the Ridge Gym compared to the Rec Center is like a pea to lime. There’s more to be offered at the latter.
Now imagine a sports team trying to get their competitive edge on in a crowded area with people not doing the same as them. There wouldn’t be much progress. Both parties of people need their own space to work out in.
The Ridge Gym is smaller and fits varsity athletes better. So what if it’s “exclusive”? You’re not missing out on much. The question is now whether if those athletes are the ones missing out on better equipment and machines and if it’s fair to them?
