Freeman Athletic Center – Wesleyan University

You can have your decorated locker rooms with fancy cubbyholes for each skater, your automatic faucets and toilets, your water bottle filling stations, your showers with hot water and good water pressure.
It all comes down to how you make ice.
Leave it to a well-​funded private university to provide such an exceptional product. It’s some of the best ice in the state. Credit the brand new Zamboni, as well as those who know how to use it. Even the pegs they use to keep the nets on are more intelligently designed, and do a better job of anchoring 100 pounds of wrought iron to a freshly cut surface.
Not like any of this makes me a better hockey player…
The Freeman also includes a natatorium, a basketball court, and a big indoor astroturf facility for track, football, lacrosse, soccer, etc. All the venues are cleverly mashed together into a single sports megaplex. The plaque reads «1990,» which makes me me think, «Hey, this place is really new!» Then I realize that was nearly a quarter century ago… I’m aging.