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Comments
Funny you mentioned racquetball, as at UGA everyone had to take 5 quarter hours of PE to graduate. Most PE courses were only 1 hour credit. So I got creative and took Racquetball, Rifle Marksmanship, Volleyball and Pocket Billiards!
Some UGA football players were in these with me, including All SEC O-Linemen Warren Gray and Peter Anderson (pocket billiards). In Rifle class there was no shooting jacket big enough to fit big Antonio Render, so he just wrapped the rifle sling around his giant bicep and shot that way!
You could also get “Proficiency” PE credits by passing both the written and skills tests of a particular sport. My buddy, a good golfer, tried to do this with Golf but failed the written test because it had questions about how to figure out handicaps!
When my son was a walkon at UWF he and a bunch of players took Tennis. Seemed like an easy A class, except that there were tests and essays on stuff like the history of tennis, how the scoring system was created, lineage of who were the winners of Wimbeldon and other famous tournaments. I think he got a C.
In my beginning racquetball class my freshman year I bet the instructor that would beat him before the semester was over. The prize was his racquet. I ended up beating him on the last day and he handed over his racquet. I was never much of an academic, but I was very athletic.
For many years, students at West Georgia had to pass a swimming test to graduate. Not sure if that was a system wide requirement or not.
We had a mandatory lifesaving swimming course at Ga Tech when I was a student there (before I saw the “light” and changed majors and went to UGA 🤣). That may be the course to which you are referring.
It was right after our involvement in Vietnam and we were required to learn self-lifesaving techniques in water in case we were ever on a downed ship.
So, in addition to swimming laps in preparation for swimming long distances ….., we had to learn how to survive in the water for long periods of time….. such as jumping from large heights with our clothes on and making floats out of our clothes, floating with our hands and feet tied together (simulating tangled clothes or broken limbs) treading water with just our arms or with just our legs (depending on which were tied) and bobbing off the bottom of the pool with both sets of limbs tied together ….quite intense, actually.
One of the better P.E. courses I ever took…..because when you passed that course you felt as if you could survive anything!
Also took Billiards, Golf and Bowling classes at GT and UGA….great times!
Holy cow! Was that an ROTC course or something? That is very intense for a regular college course. We did that in the Marines for our water survival quals, but I can't imagine average college students doing something like that.
Which reminds me....my freshman year at Texas A&I (I did my first year there) I took an ROTC course. It was pretty cool. One day they took us on Huey helicopters out to this remote area in the King Ranch. There they had a bunch of chickens, rabbits, and a huge goat. They taught us how to slaughter, skin, and cook animals. Kind of traumatic for a 17 year old kid who had never killed anything in his life. There were people barfing and crying and passing out.
It might have been….but no doubt it was Navy sponsored (Ga Tech historically had a Naval adjunct at the school)….
But, yeah, best I remember it was a required PT course…..remember, Tech’s enrollment back in the mid ‘70’s was much smaller so everyone could take it. If it wasn’t required, many still took it and it was a helluva good learning experience!!
My dad can’t swim. And he is a West Georgia grad
I should have been more specific...one had to get a signature that stated he/she could swim. There were ways, even back then. I recall more than a few of my psych students who failed the swim test and had to take a swimming course. I guess I just assumed one had to be able to swim to pass the swimming class. Maybe not.
Speaking of bowling, my girlfriend had the same bowling teacher that I had for rifle class. We laughed about her saying the same instructions in both classes:
1 - “Put your gun/ball up to your shoulder.”
2 - “AIM.”
3 - “Fire/bowl when you’re ready.”
I thought to myself, if someone actually must be told to “aim” then they oughta just quit.
I took advantage of the PE classes to be sure I had some scheduled exercise every quarter/semester to prevent me from findings way to blow it off otherwise due to my work schedules, etc. I took Karate, Tennis 1, 2 & 3, walking, running, racquetball, weightlifting (Coach Sam Mrvos taught that one in the Stegman gym weight room) and others I do not even remember. The racquetball coach was a post-grad student who weighed at least 400 pounds -not even exaggerating- and no one could beat him because of his skill at placing the ball and running you all over the court while setting up his kill shots. I think he placed really high in the open tournament.
Very similar “water survival” course was required at Emory, too. The final included having to float in the water for 30 minutes; fully clothed, in a hanging crucifixion pose (legs down, arms out to the side), face down only turning your head to the side to breath in. Rationale was to conserve energy by lifting your heavy head out of the water. If you got caught raising your head up, your clock started over.
Shortly after and like @Bdw3184, I came to my senses and transferred to the Classic City!
I always hated playing those old fat dudes who could place it like crazy and hit a splat at any time.
It was humbling, to say the least. I was not a racquetball newbie, either.
I remember UGA basketball coach Hugh Durham was quite a good racquetball player. Apparently he once won black uniforms for the basketball team in a bet by beating someone in a racquetball match.