Compound Interest: High-tech compound bows are preferred by many of the 30-some students who show up for Archery Club practice at Hamel Recreation Center twice a week. Beginners usually start with a 35-pound bow, but Bridget O'Donnell '09, front, is a bowhunter who shoots with 42 pounds of draw weight. Compound bows take less strength to hold at full draw than the long bows or recurves that most of us recall from our days at camp. Regardless of the bow, archery is a demanding sport, says coach Mark Olson. "Eighty percent of it is mental," he says, which can be extremely draining. On the drive home from competitions, he says, "We're two minutes down the road, and they're all asleep." Behind O'Donnell are, left to right, Samantha Smith '11, Emily Bastian '08, Brad Kiehl '08 and Aaron Longchamps '10.
Take it to the Mat: At Judo Club practice, Marcia Ahlgren '09 takes down Thomas Lamb '11 with a kesa gatame, or scarf lock pin. Every year, the team travels to several meets, and in 2007, Rachel Mixon '09, Devon St. Cyr '09 and James "J.J." Melfi '10 all took first place at the state championships. "It's good exercise, and it's fun to learn to defend yourself," says Ahlgren. "I get out a lot of stress and aggression." After practice, she says, "I just want to take a shower and go to bed."
Full Tilt: Kathryn "Kat" Vollinger '10, top, scales the Rec Center's "bouldering wall," a popular spot for climbers since it was installed in 2005. Below, Juggling Club members Lauren Lazarus '09, left, and Jonathan "J.B." Brown '11 practice passing clubs while president Patrick Nearing '08, right, simultaneously juggles clubs and balances one on his chin. At their weekly practices, members pass clubs in patterns that can get so complex that mathematical notation is needed to write them down. "It's not a huge coincidence that most of our jugglers are majoring in physics, math or engineering," says Nearing, a civil engineering major. Brown says the key to juggling is to relax, and the easiest way to stay relaxed is to "come to terms with the fact that you're going to drop something now and then."
Bonetti's Defense? Jake Tremblay '11, left, and Gloria Snyder '10 are two of the three dozen students on the UNH Fencing Team. Tremblay, a theater major, took up fencing to learn a skill he may need someday as an actor. But he has another motivation. "Swords," he says, "are just cool." Snyder says at fencing practice, she forgets everything else. "And when I go back to the dorm," she adds, "I can get into my homework again." It's also "a blast," she says. "There aren't many things you can do where you get to beat up your friends."
Ice Bound: Since UNH Campus Recreation took over management of the Whittemore Center from an outside firm, student access to the ice has been given a higher priority. Students have flocked to open skating hours, especially since skate rentals were added three years ago; a holiday skating party in December drew 200 students.
Traffic Jam: Most UNHers think of the Whittemore Center's skating rink as the home for Wildcat ice hockey, as indeed it is. But the rink also accommodates a host of other sports, including club ice hockey, the Skating Club, pick-up hockey and broomball (above). More than 1,800 students in 160 teams play broomball, a sport that requires no special skills or equipment--only a hankering for some fun and energy to burn. The adjacent Rec Center is a beehive of activity throughout the school year, with thousands of students stopping by for workouts and 27 organized sports clubs. In one week in late January, 16,000 students, faculty, staff and community members used the center, says David Leach, assistant director of facilities. "If you build it," he says, "they will come."
