![]() Though far and few in between, there is a network of individuals on campus who don’t just love billiards but love the billiards hall. OK, so it’s not football, but what pool lacks in aggression and physicality, it makes up for tenfold in strategy and tact. That tournament is held every year, and it’s bliss for those of us who crave the intensity of calmly tapping safety shots for two hours patiently awaiting a chance to run the table in one foul devastating swoop. I lost, we shook hands and they asked me where the parties were. While my fraternity brothers were doing what they do, I was locked in a heated game of nine-ball until midnight against a couple of students from Carnegie Mellon University. My freshman year, the UMTPC was the weekend of Halloween. In fact, U-M hosts the largest college pool tournament in the country, the University of Michigan Team Pool Championships. It wasn’t long before I was on the club pool team. This is my refuge, my paradise and my home. The green-felted nine-foot Brunswick tables put the ratty seven-footer my dad taught me to play on to shame. ![]() It is where I would unwind after a long day and where I would bring people to understand me a bit more. I spent hours every week –– probably every day –– in this room my freshman year. As this academic year ends, so too will the lingering life of the historic billiards hall. However, one room on the second floor remains virtually untouched, frozen in time and displaying the Union’s winding story. ![]() Over the century since, these amenities have slowly been replaced by a computer lab, Starbucks, Au Bon Pain, fast food chains and other facilities that fill today’s Union. ![]() Few people know that when the Michigan Union was erected in 1919, it boasted a bowling alley, bar, swimming pool, barber shop, hotel rooms and much more. ![]()
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