Graduate student Shreyas Rajapur Sanjay pushes graduate student Dhanush Srinivas down a hill Jan. 25 at Doug Russell Park. Srinivas said the cold didn’t bother him because he was distracted by the fun.
This is a collection of vignettes from various locations across campus during the weekend winter storm. A vignette is a short story capturing a scene or a moment in time.
There’s a science to it
Rain crashed down Friday night. It wasn’t sleet, it wasn’t snow — it was just rain. Later, however, the winter weather hit.
A blanket of white covered the campus Saturday morning as temperatures stayed below freezing. Every few minutes, a student would pop out of their residence hall. It wasn’t until the afternoon that snowballs flew in the air and snowmen began to appear on the ground.
Mechanical engineering sophomores Julie Rasmussen and Nashwan Chowdhury decided Brazos Park was the perfect place to build their snowman.
Chowdhury said they picked Brazos Park because it had an artificial grass surface, which, in theory, would make the snow melt slower when the sun came back out.
Rasmussen said the snow hadn’t been cooperating, so they tried incorporating science. They mixed the snow with water to make it more moldable, easier to roll up and more likely to keep its shape.
“We’re engineers,” Chowdhury said.
Rasmussen initiated going outside and texted Chowdhury. She drove from off campus while Chowdhury walked.
“I slowly drove over here because the walk would have been maybe like 10-15 minutes,” Rasmussen said. “It’s too cold for that.”
She said the drive was a little nerve-racking, but in the end she was having fun outside with her friend.
As the day went on, slowly, Rasmussen and Chowdhury’s snowman began to take shape in a little orange chair in Brazos Park. Once constructed, it would look on as the campus was frozen.
“We needed snow,” Rasmussen said. “It’s long due, long overdue.”
Computer engineering freshman Sandesh Pokhrel plays soccer as snow falls Jan. 24 at Brazos Park. Pokhrel said he stayed warm by running around chasing the ball.
Another game of pickup
The forward glides along the ice. He goes left, beating a defender with speed. The attacker looks up, and the only thing between him and the net is the goalie.
He winds up and shoots.
GOAL.
Players weren’t competing for any gold medals Saturday at UTA, but it wasn’t a regular pickup soccer match either. Brazos Park was filled with snow.
Energy engineering sophomore Ryan Varisco had a lot of free time Saturday, so he and a couple of friends walked the campus, observing familiar buildings now adorned in a varnish of white.
Eventually, the group grabbed a soccer ball and kicked it around in a parking garage, later moving to Brazos Park.
Soon, others began joining in, and a full game broke out on the white field.
“Their team, I will say, was much better,” Varisco said. “But it was good. It was lots of slipping, it’s completely different from normal soccer.”
The group used the wooden stacking blocks at Brazos Park as goal posts on both sides and there was no real out-of-bounds area.
Computer engineering freshman Sandesh Pokharel is an international student who joined after Varisco and his friends moved to Brazos Park. Pokharel said it was his and most of his friends’ first time seeing snow in Texas.
“How many times did I not slip,” Pokharel said, laughing. “When you chase the ball, every time you are slipping all around.”
While students slid around the DIY pitch, Varisco said he didn’t think there were any injuries. He and his friends, old and new, were just having fun.
“It was unexpected, but I think those are often the most fun parts of life,” he said.
The third hill
On Sunday, more snow came down, and the temperature dropped. There was a fresh sheet of snow on streets, sidewalks, buildings and grass.
The worsened conditions didn’t stop students from coming back outside. In fact, three of them were looking for the perfect hill to sled on.
They carried a UTA dining sign as a sled and used a bungee cord to steer. The group started at the Maverick Activities Center, but the sled was getting caught up on the rough snow, so they tried their luck at Doug Russell Park.
“The perfect hill, I would say, it needs to be uniform all the way,” said Dhanush Srinivas, computer science master’s student. “It needs to be a good elevation, not too high, otherwise we’re just going to go sliding off the edge into the creek.”
The second location they found worked, but with trees and rocks as obstacles, it wasn’t ideal. It was the hill to the right that got the job done: the third hill.
Shreyas Rajapur Sanjay, data science master’s student, said the third hill was unpredictable, and the sledder could go in either direction.
“Everyone’s having fun, there’s no traffic around, it’s superb,” Rajapur Sanjay said.
“You can’t get anything better than this,” he said.
Srinivas said sledding down the hills was some of the most fun he’s had since the new year. He said he thought the group might stay out until the afternoon, or possibly even until sunset.
As the day went on, more and more students began arriving at Doug Russell Park, each having their own go at the third hill. But it was the group of three master’s students, laughing, catching each other at the bottom of the hill and just having fun, that found the perfect hill.
“It’s really hard to see snow. I mean, one or two days that we see snow in Arlington, really got to make the best out of it,” said Ashwin Athappan Karuppan Chetty, computer science master’s student. “I mean, we just live once, right? You just have to enjoy it.”
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