The day was September 6, 2017. I had just gotten out of my last class of the day, but knew I’d have to get right back to the grind in a couple hours because it was press night (the night that all the sections editors like me work until the twilight hours of the night to get their section of the Maroon ready for print).

I badly needed to de-stress beforehand and I knew just the way. The sports complex had finally fully re-opened that day, and after waiting for weeks, I could at long last reunite with God’s greatest gift to planet Earth: basketball. As I was going up the elevator to the fifth floor of the sports complex, I couldn’t help but feel giddy, almost child-on-Christmas-morning giddy. The summer months of playing pick-up basketball on raggedy outdoor hoops in San Francisco were finally over and I would get to go back to my newly renovated, fully furnished, collegiate-grade Loyola basketball courts.

When the elevator finally dinged open and I saw the new hardwood floors, freshly painted courts and good ol’ Wolfie looking fierce as ever, I felt like a child who had just laid their eyes on a wrapped present that was the exact same shape and size of the new Pokemon game that they wrote down and circled three times on their Christmas list under the tree with their name on it. I almost didn’t care that I was probably going to be spending the rest of my day in the Maroon office, scrambling to find pictures and fill white spaces in a futile effort to finish up before Bruno’s handed out their last wine bottle on Wednesday.

I got to put a ball in a hoop for the next couple hours.

That’s when things took a turn for the worst. When I went to go check out a basketball at the front desk, they instead handed me back a torn-up, round-ish barely together piece of leather and air. And just like that, my excitement turned right back into disappointment, like the child opening that Pokemon game-shaped Christmas present and discovering it was actually just underwear and wool socks instead. Loyola Athletics might as well have handed me a slap in the face.

But in all seriousness, the gym equipment is not up to par with the semester-long gym renovations. Students like me can’t fully enjoy the benefits of having a fully furnished sports complex because the equipment we use to play with is so substandard. There’s almost no point in having these renovations with gym basketballs like the one in the picture (and that’s one of the better balls too). We expect better, Loyola Athletics.