USU athletes travel the nation
Seeing the country, flying from city to city, staying in hotels and eating out.
No, it’s not the life of a world traveler; it’s the life of a college athlete on the road.
For teams at Utah State University, about half of their games are played on the road, but it isn’t necessarily a vacation for the coaches and players – they have a full schedule.
“It isn’t as glamorous as some people like to think,” said Ken Peterson, senior associate athletic director for business operations. “It’s fun to go watch those games. We all like that, but it’s hurry up and wait.”
Peterson said there is not much free time in the road-trip schedule, which is made before the season even begins, usually months in advance.
By the end of this season, the USU football team will have been on six trips, totaling 15,706 miles, and Peterson is responsible for the planning. He said he starts early, usually beginning his planning for the next season in December, because he has to make arrangements for a travel party of 66 to 95 players, 12 coaches and assistants and the additional support personnel.
Smaller teams don’t require such advanced planning. Amy Crosbie, assistant women’s volleyball coach, said she begins planning in the spring but only has to make arrangements for 12 to 16 players, three coaches and a trainer. Chris Wright, men’s and women’s tennis head coach, said he usually plans at least a month in advance.
For the teams, making travel and accommodation arrangements is a balance between convenience and value.
When he makes arrangements, Peterson said he makes up a schedule of what he needs and then gets bids. Based on the bids, he said he will take what best fits his needs.
“If it’s feasible and not too difficult, we’ll of course take the best price,” he said.
Recently, Peterson said it has been most effective for the football team to charter a plane, because it allows the team to leave when it needs to, not according to an airline schedule. Additionally, he said it has been hard to get 95 people onto the same commercial flight.
The day before a game, the football team departs for the Salt Lake International Airport. It requires three buses to move the team, Peterson said.
“It’s more than just putting people on an airplane,” he said. “You’ve got 6,000 pounds of equipment that you have to move. You’ve got trainers and managers and doctors and administrators and all these kind of people who usually go with the team.”
For other teams, travel isn’t quite as complicated. Crosbie said the volleyball team works with a travel agent and books commercial flights, while for in-state matches the team takes vans.
Wright said the tennis teams take vans to most of their matches, and only fly a couple of times per year, mainly for California road trips.
Once at the destination, Peterson said the football team uses more chartered buses, while Crosbie said the volleyball team rents vans.
“It’s always a game figuring out who we’re renting cars with, because we change every week,” Crosbie said. “It’s an ordeal. It’s not like Emerald Isle and you just walk out and pick up your car. I wish it was like that.”
In setting up hotels, Peterson said he uses a network of contacts to help make his arrangement. Often, he will call schools that, in the past, have stayed where he is planning on staying and find what worked for them.
“I’ve done this for a long time, so I have a pretty good network of communications,” he said.
Crosbie said she searches to find something that is both safe and affordable for the team.
“I’ll look at five to six hotels before I actually take a bid from someone,” she said. “Sometimes it’s a really bad hotel, and sometimes it’s a really good one.”
At the hotels, players share rooms, but they have their own beds.
Bryan Jackson, a safety on the football team, said the coaches decide the room assignments, and he has had the same roommate all season. Volleyball middle blocker Ingrid Roth said the players on her team change roommates.
“We switch every time just to make sure you’re interacting with every member on your team,” she said. “It helps unify teams, because you’ll find some people will talk in their sleep or some people will get up in the middle of the night and do this or do that.”
Once the football team is at its hotel for the night, the players have a curfew, usually 11 p.m., Jackson said.
Roth said for the volleyball team, the limits are placed more on when the players need to wake up.
“Based on that time, people make their own kind of accommodations, because we all want to get rest before matches, that’s no question,” she said.
When it comes to eating on the road, finding a hotel that can provide meals is important for the football team, Peterson said.
“You’ve got to have a hotel that can feed 95 people,” he said. “We don’t just give [the players] five bucks and say ‘go eat.’ We feed them a sit-down dinner. They all eat as a team.”
For the players on the volleyball team, meals are done differently. Crosbie said they try to stay at hotels with continental breakfasts, then eat out for the remainder of the meals.
To be in and out of the restaurant in a reasonable amount of time, the team has a menu faxed to its hotel and pre-orders, Crosbie said.
“The frustrating thing is getting there and the girls forgetting what they ordered,” she said.
Though the players are always eating out, Roth said they watch what they eat.
“We get good food in us,” she said. “No grease, no soda – stuff like that. But that’s just normal, I think, for all athletes to not want to put bad things into your body.”
With the tight schedules for a team on the road, players don’t often have a lot of free time, but they do have some. On some trips, the volleyball team will play matches on Thursday and Saturday, giving them a free day Friday.
On those free days, the players practice, but the coaches have something for them to do, Crosbie said.
“We usually try to plan some kind of activity so they’re not stuck in the hotel all day, whether it’s shopping or going out for a walk,” she said.
Roth said she likes arriving early and having time to practice.
“I can get used to a gym and my legs can come back after being on an airplane, because I’m kind of a big girl, and being on an airplane, they don’t build them for me,” she said.
Peterson said the players on the football team usually don’t have free time, and when they do, they are limited in what they can do.
“It’s hard to take a 56-passenger bus dragging main,” he said. “You just kind of have to go with the bus.”
Any free time left for the players is usually spent studying or relaxing.
“I don’t get bored,” Roth said. “I always have to study. There’s always homework you can do.”
Wright said, “Some players always have their head in books.”
Fawn Michel, an athletic trainer who travels with the volleyball team, doesn’t have to study, but she said she spends her free time reading.
“I take a lot of books,” she said.
When he isn’t studying, Jackson said there is usually plenty to do. Players will play cards or watch movies to pass the time, especially on the trip home, he said.
“It seems like time goes so slow. It takes forever to get home,” he said.
For as much as they travel, the teams don’t run into problems often.
Michel said the worst experience she has had was lost luggage. She said both her personal luggage and training equipment were lost, but only for a short time. She was able to get them back.
Jackson said, “The only bad experience is losing and coming home on the long trip.”
Although they are busy on trips, the players and the coaches said they generally like traveling and have had good experiences.
Roth said she has had a great time traveling this season.
“We go to California all the time. I love go
ing there,” she said. “It’ll be 30 degrees here in Utah and it’s 70 out there, and they think it’s cold.”
Crosbie said traveling gets somewhat repetitive later in the season, though.
“I love traveling, but I think after you’re on your eighth trip and you’ve been to Salt Lake 16 times, it’s just not as exciting,” she said. “I will never ever complain about going to California at this time of year, though.”
But in the end, there really is no place like home.
“I’ve always enjoyed traveling, but by far, I love playing at home, and I think that the girls would agree that the home-court advantage and just being at home is so much nicer,” Crosbie said.
-slbk5@cc.usu.edu