from University of Florida, Gainesville

I’ve been here nearly a week.

The Women’s NCAA Gymnastics Championships brought me to Gainesville. An awesome competition this year. Florida did not win.

It’s an honour to finally get to such a prestigious centre of sporting excellence, though.

… The University of Florida’s intercollegiate sports teams, known as the “Florida Gators,” compete in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I and the Southeastern Conference (SEC). …

Florida’s athletic program has ranked among the top five in the nation in twelve of the past seventeen years, and it is the only Division I program that has ranked among the top ten athletic programs in the country in each of the last twenty-three years.

Florida is one of only two Division I FBS universities to win multiple national championships in each of the two most popular NCAA sports: football (1996, 2006, 2008) and men’s basketball (2006, 2007). …

… The university is also the sixth largest single-campus university in the United States by student population …

Great Spring weather. Plenty of pretty Florida girls. A beautiful campus …

The most memorable part of my week, though, was wandering the backstreets of historic downtown Gainesville. Dilapidated old shacks. Lovely buildings a century old. Folks playing gospel and the Blues in their yards. …

I stayed right across the street from the Hippodrome Theatre (1911).