Month: March 2024

Hello everyone! It is Jack here and I hope everyone is having a good spring break. One of the things that I would like to discuss in this post is Rowing, a new activity which I began doing during my time at UC Irvine. In this post I will go through through the activity, what I think about it and how to get started with it.

When I came to UC Irvine, I originally wanted to compete in a sport. As I was looking for something to compete in, I found club sports. During the first week of the school year there are many opportunities to understand more about the club sports at UC Irvine. The Anteater Involvement Fair and Late Night at the ARC are great opportunities to learn more about club sports and at some of these events there may even be an activity which helps to shower you how the sport is. Most of the club sport teams are competitive and some even accept members who have never played the sport.

I had never rowed before I came to UC Irvine and by the end of Week 0, I was already in my first boat. Throughout the school year I have been able to wake up early most mornings and complete a workout or a row which has prepared me to race. Rowing is one of the interesting club sports as it was formerly an intercollegiate sport, but it now competes as a club team but races some intercollegiate teams. Most of the rowing that we do takes place in Newport Harbor, but there are opportunities to race in other places.

Rowing is a nice activity to get exercise in as some of the team’s members initially joined for that reason, but it is also nice to be able to practice in open water and face some really talented athletes in some of the races. While practices may take place at an early hour in the morning, they are also at a time when the sunrise can be seen.

As for how to be a rower, you could always join your college’s club team or a local club team. UC Irvine rowing usually recruits rowers from September through January and usually at a college club Rowing team they will teach an incoming rower how to row. If you would like to get a feel for the movements of Rowing before going out on the water, one could always practice on a rowing machine, something which is available at the Anteater Recreation Center and many other gyms. Once one would like to try the water, they could row on their own (skulling) or row with one, three or seven others (sweeping). Rowing in the bodies of water around UC Irvine requires a lot of care for the boats, since much of the water is salt water, but the views are excellent. One tip about Rowing would be to do it early in the morning or late at night as it is easier as waters are much calmer at those times of day.

That is it for me for this post and I hope everyone has a great remainder of spring break! Zot Zot Zot!

Hello everyone, it is Jack once again and I am here to share some photos of some of the moments I found most interesting at UC Irvine In the first few weeks of the quarter! Most of these are athletics related, but that is an area I do not think I have been able to share about yet, so I am going to share it now.

This is a photo of the exterior of the Bren Events Center when the UC Irvine Women’s Basketball team played Long Beach State for kids day. This was an important game as it had the largest attendance of any UC Irvine Women’s Basketball game ever. I took these photos here a while ago, but tomorrow the women’s basketball team plays Gonzaga in the first round of March Madness, hopefully they will be able to get their first March Madness win ever.

This is a photo of the 2024 UC Irvine Men’s Tennis home opener against BYU, the Anteaters won and it was the first tennis match that I had watched at UC Irvine.

This was the next day during the next men’s tennis match against San Diego State. The Anteaters were able to win and on some days in late winter and early spring, due to the proximity of the tennis stadium and the baseball field, you can hear the baseball game from the tennis stadium. This was one of those days.

This is a photo of the post-game of a UC Irvine Men’s Basketball game against CSUN. The Anteaters were able to win and they actually went undefeated at home this season. There are a variety of activities at men’s and women’s basketball games, so I encourage all students to at least attend one.

This is a photo of the Men’s Volleyball match against UCLA, which the Anteaters lost 3-2. It has to have been my favorite match that I attended in the Bren Events Center as the crowd was really getting into it and the Anteaters almost came back from a 2-0 deficit. Men’s Volleyball matches are definitely the second most popular type of game to attend after basketball and at times they have similar attendance numbers, if you ever have a chance try to attend a Men’s Volleyball match you should go as they are very lively and the team is usually ranked top 10 in the nation.

For a break from athletics, this is an example of a program hosted by a resident advisor in one of the on-campus residence communities. My residence hall is very active when it comes to programs and at times students who do not even live in my hall attend. On this night we were playing bingo and other board and card games.

I hope this gives students and others a good idea about some of the activities at UC Irvine and I hope to share some more information about life at UCI in my next posts. Next time I will be sharing about one of the activities I never thought of participating in before I came to UC Irvine! Until next time, I hope everyone has a good end to finals week and Zot Zot Zot!