On a bright crisp Saturday morning in February, a few members of my class went on a tour of the Zion’s Basketball Center. This is the practice facility for the Jazz and also the place where visiting teams practice when in town for a game. We learned many new things about the NBA and the world in which they all live. Following are a few of the highlights for those that were there:

Mariah: I really liked seeing the Jazz players’ locker rooms. Some of the players had left their shoes out on their chairs, their shoes are HUGE!!! Some of the shoes that we saw had the player’s initial, name, or uniform number on them. They don’t sit on benches like most locker rooms, they have really nice chairs to sit on.

Matt: The best part of the tour was when Kevin O’Connor, who happened to be working out in the gym, went and found us a couple of basketballs and told us that we could shoot hoops for about 10 minutes!!! The other thing that was amazing to me was seeing the tape room where hundreds of tapes of the Jazz are stored. We also learned that the NBA keeps copies of all the games that are played.

Colton and Owen: The Jazz have this big theater room with REALLY NICE comfortable chairs that they sit on to watch films of themselves, and other teams. We were told that Boozer and D. Will spend a lot of time in the theater room.

Ryan: My favorite thing about the practice facility was seeing the photos of each of the players. There is an 8 x 10 of each player, signed, hanging in the Hall of Fame as we walked out of the gym.

Mason: I really liked the big rec room that they had I would love to hang out there with them some time! I also liked playing on the court and looking at the lockers!

Mary: There was a pole that had bars that you would run and jump and hit the highest one you could to see how high you could jump. I really liked trying that out! I also enjoyed looking at the room where they get their hands or feet taped.

All in all, those that were able to make it to the Saturday morning tour had a GREAT time!!