-Lawal Damilare

Hey, what are you doing? Wild guess. You’ve locked yourself away from civilization, trying to work around the surging pressure? Sadly, you haven’t seen anything yet. This is Unibadan. There’ll always be deadlines to be met, goals to be achieved, and targets that would never be fulfilled. 

The vicious cycle keeps going. Invest in things that would make you genuinely happy and attach some semblance of sanity. Here, it’s sports. At least about 97.15%. If you didn’t read the first part of this piece, you definitely shouldn’t go past this paragraph. If you did, here’s the next batch as promised:

Badminton

Badminton is played using racquets to hit a shuttlecock across a net. It can be played as singles or doubles and is relatively easy to pick up gender status regardless. Points are scored by striking the shuttlecock with the racquet and landing it within the opposing side’s half of the court. 

In this establishment, the badminton team is skippered by Olusegun Asaye of the Great Independence Hall. The team had a relatively poor outing at the last NUGA games amassing only one win across the tourney. The team currently trains at the Bello dome and just outside the UI gym occasionally.

 Volleyball & Handball

Volleyball is a game in which two teams of a maximum of six players are separated by a net, each team attempts to score points by grounding the ball within half of the other team. The UI team is currently under the direction of Dr. Ifeta and trains at 5 pm at the SUB volleyball court.

Handball bears striking similarities to football except it’s more comfortably played with the hands with a smaller ball. A typical game has 7 players on each side. UI’s handball team is led by Adedigba Olushola and has their training at the SUB cricket pavilion. The team recently recruited as they look to make significant improvements on the team fielded at the last NUGA games.

Athletics

Athletics refers to the entirety of track and field events spanning running, racing, jumping, and throwing events amongst others. The bulk of the team’s training session happens at the new AWO stadium and occasional body-building exercises at the school gym. The team has succeeded in developing some wonderful athletes over the years. Case in point, Egbeyemi Bowo was the fastest man at the University of Ibadan last year. The faculty of Technology student finished a sprint in a remarkable 11.4 seconds carting away gold medals in the 100m and 200m categories. The team is currently taking young athletes who want to expand their skill set.

If none of the sports from both pieces interest you, you could always try out the recreational spot for table tennis and pool just opposite the ITEMS office in the school area.