Can You Play Basketball at an Atlanta College Gym?

If you have driven past the Georgia Tech Campus Recreation Center and wondered whether you could get a run in on one of the six courts upstairs, the answer is no — not on your own, and not for money. Georgia's college gyms are some of the best basketball facilities in the state, and almost none of them will sell you a way in.

We checked the published membership and guest policies for every college and university gym in our directory across metro Atlanta, Athens, Statesboro and Macon. Here is what they actually say, what it costs, and the three routes in that do exist.

The short version

No major college gym in Georgia sells a membership or a day pass to the general public. Two of them say so in those words. Every one of them sells a guest pass — but only to someone a current member walks in with. The price of a college gym in Georgia is not money. It is a sponsor.

What each school publishes

Georgia Tech — Campus Recreation Center, Midtown

The CRC's main gymnasium on the fourth floor has six multi-purpose courts used for basketball, and they are open for free play as well as reservations. It is the best public-ish basketball facility inside the Perimeter, and the access rules are the clearest of any school we checked.

• General public: no public membership category is published. The rule on the rate page is that you need a BuzzCard plus a current membership or day pass, and every published membership and day-pass category is tied to student, employee, affiliate or alumni status.
• Day passes ($5–$10 depending on category) are sold only to students, employees, affiliates and alumni.
• Guest pass: $15 per day, purchased online by the guest. You must be sponsored by an active member and accompanied the entire visit.
• Alumni: $20/week or $42/month.
• Employees: $36/month by payroll deduction; retirees and affiliates $17/week or $40/month.
• Plus One: $63/month. This is the one route to unlimited access with no Georgia Tech affiliation of your own — a member can add one adult.

Georgia State — Student Recreation Center, Downtown

Georgia State is the bluntest of the set. Its membership page states: "Memberships are not available to the general public."

• Guest pass: $10 per visit. One guest per member per visit, accompanied throughout. Atlanta campus only — the Perimeter campuses do not offer guest passes.
• Alumni (degree-holding): $306/year or $102/semester. Alumni can also buy a $5 day pass without holding a membership, which is the cheapest alumni rate we found anywhere.
• Faculty, staff and retirees: $252/year, $84/semester, or $21/month.
• Worth knowing: guest passes and alumni and retiree day passes are all unavailable during PantherCard-controlled access hours.

Emory — Woodruff PE Center, Druid Hills

Emory's rate sheet has a row labelled Community for the WoodPEC, and the entry reads "Not available." But Emory has the widest affiliate definition in the state, and that is the interesting part.

• Alumni and affiliates: $39/month on a three-month-plus commitment, or $468/year.
• Affiliates include employees of the CDC, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, the VA Hospital and the Carter Center, among others. If you work at any of them, Emory's gym is open to you at the alumni rate — and a lot of people in that bracket do not know it.
• Plus One: alumni and affiliates can add an adult for $30/month on top.
• Emory's other facility, the SAAC on Clairmont Road, does sell a Community membership at $749/year. The WoodPEC does not.

Georgia Gwinnett College — Wellness and Recreation Center, Lawrenceville

GGC is the cheapest college door in Georgia, by a wide margin.

• Guest pass: $5 per day, bought in person at the Membership Services desk. A member may bring up to three guests daily. Photo ID required.
• Students, faculty and staff: free. Family members of faculty and staff, $10 per month each.

Because GGC membership is free to its own students and employees, the sponsor requirement is much easier to satisfy here than at a school where your host is paying $40 a month for the privilege.

University of Georgia — Ramsey Student Center, Athens

• General public: no community membership. Every member needs a UGA-issued ID number.
• Guest pass: $12/day for adults, $5/day under 18, bought at Ramsey, accompanied by an active member.
• Alumni: $42/month. Faculty, staff and retirees: $20 for one month, $15/month on a multi-month commitment.
• Affiliates — a short and specific list that includes campus ministers, OLLI participants and sorority house mothers — $30 for one month or $25/month ongoing.

Georgia Southern — Recreation Activity Center, Statesboro

• General public: no community or public membership.
• Guest pass: $7/day. A member may sponsor up to two guests in a day and has to stay in the building the whole time. Guests under 16 are weekends only during fall and spring.
• Non-fee-paying students: $120 per fall or spring semester, $96 summer.

Clayton State, Life University, and the AUC schools

The pattern holds and gets tighter.

• Clayton State publishes two categories only: students, via the Student Activities Center fee, and faculty and staff at $20 per semester. No community membership and no day pass are published.
• Life University in Marietta restricts the fitness center to students, faculty, staff and fitness center members — and its FAQ states that guest passes are currently suspended "in order to better serve our campus community."
• Clark Atlanta's Epps Gymnasium, Morehouse's Forbes Arena and Spelman's Read Hall publish nothing at all about public access, guest policies or facility rental rates. We list all three, and for all three the honest instruction is to contact the athletics department directly.

A gap worth naming

Kennesaw State publishes a detailed rate sheet — alumni $40/month, employees $35/month, affiliates $40/month with a member sponsor, and an unusual $20/month Morning membership valid 6am–11:30am weekdays and all weekend hours. What the rate sheet does not contain is any community membership, guest pass or day pass. And because the sheet covers the Student Recreation and Activities Center and the Recreation and Wellness Center rather than the Convocation Center, we have deliberately not applied those rates to the KSU arena listings in our directory. A rate that belongs to one building on a campus is not a rate for the campus.

The three routes in

Stripped of detail, there are exactly three:

1. Be sponsored. Find someone with a card. Every school on this list sells a guest pass, from $5 at Georgia Gwinnett to $15 at Georgia Tech, and every one of them requires a member to buy it, walk you in, and stay with you.
2. Be an affiliate. The affiliate definitions are broader than most people assume — the CDC, Children's Healthcare and the VA get you Emory at $39/month; campus ministers get you Ramsey at $25/month. Check whether your employer is on a list before you assume it isn't.
3. Be a Plus One. Georgia Tech at $63/month and Emory at $30/month on top of a member's rate are the only published routes to unlimited college-gym access with no affiliation of your own.

And the honest advice: you probably shouldn't

Here is the thing a college-gym guide usually leaves out. A sponsored guest pass at Georgia Tech costs $15 for one visit. At UGA it is $12. Against that, the published drop-in prices at public gyms around metro Atlanta look like this:

• E Center, Sugar Hill — $2 per person, open play Monday to Saturday 7am–9pm and Sunday noon–6pm. The widest published open-play window in the metro.
• Custer Park Sports & Fitness Center, Marietta — $2 a visit on the city's published adult open-play rate.
• Roswell — $4 resident drop-in.
• Forsyth County — a $5 day pass, valid across Central Park, Fowler Park and Old Atlanta Park.
• Gwinnett County rec centers — $2.25 adult, $1.25 youth and senior drop-in.
• Hall County — an Open Gym Membership for basketball specifically at $12/month, plus a $5 one-time card fee, valid across all three of its centers. One month of unlimited basketball for less than a single guest pass at Tech.
• City of Decatur, Ebster and Oakhurst — published open-gym basketball sessions.

A college gym is a beautiful place to play and the worst value for money in Georgia indoor basketball unless you are already affiliated. If what you want is a run this week rather than a tour of the CRC, the public gyms are cheaper, they publish their hours, and nobody has to walk you in.

Browse every indoor court we have in the directory, or find a run near you in the app.