With NCAC Division III schools stretching from the Midwest to the East Coast,
sports teams often have to make hotel arrangements for their longer treks.
The average one-way trip for DePauw teams to an away
NCAC game is four hours and 19 minutes.
GRAPHIC BY NICOLE DECRISCIO / THE DEPAUW
While playing a game on the road is never an ideal situation, DePauw University’s athletic department makes the best of the situation.
“Anytime you take an athlete and take them out of their comfort zone it's going make some changes,” said Adam Cohen, head men’s swimming and diving coach. “We can do some things to minimize it though.”
One way the DePauw athletic department minimizes the affect of travel on student-athletes' performance is arranging for the team to spend the night in a hotel before a match or game.
A number of factors go into determining if a hotel stay is necessary.
“We look at … the amount of missed class time, we’re going to look at game time, we’re going to look at how far we’re traveling, what time might we have to leave campus,” said Stevie Baker-Watson, DePauw’s athletic director.
While the choice of which hotel to stay at is left up to the discretion of coaches, it is often dictated by proximity to the opposing team’s competition site. This restriction can lead to questionable conditions in some cases.
Adrian Ables, a junior men’s soccer player dealt with this first hand.
“I had to move rooms because it had bedbugs in it,” said Ables recalling an incident that occurred this fall.
Brad Hauter, head men’s soccer coach, called the occurrence that Ables was involved in, “an isolated occurrence.”
While hotel preference is left up to a coach, the number of student-athlete’s per room is written out in DePauw’s athletic department travel guidelines.
“We ask that there are no more than four student-athletes per room and no less than two,” Baker-Watson said.
The men’s soccer team usually places three players in a room with two beds. Deciding who gets to sleep alone usually comes down to seniority.
“If you’re a freshman you usually sleep with the other younger kid,” Ables said.
Men’s swimming takes a slightly different approach, varying the number of athletes per room depending on the gravity of the meet.
“For competition meets … we usually put two to a room,” Cohen said. “That has 100 percent to do with sleep quality.”
For meets with little on the line, the team usually has four swimmers stay in one room.
Transportation to a team’s hotel and game differs from sport to sport and is dependent on a team’s roster size.
“If you’re within a 70 mile radius and we can get you into two 15 passenger vans or a 29 passenger and a 15, that’s what we do,” Baker-Watson said. “Those are typically coach driven vehicles.”
If a team exceeds those limits, the squad takes a coach bus driven by a professional driver. If two smaller teams have away games on the same day against the same opponent, which often occurs in basketball and soccer, they usually share a bus and evenly split up seats.
“In those instances the coaches will work together to essentially fill every seat on the bus,” Baker-Watson said.
In a further attempt to maximize performance on the road, the athletic department ensures student-athletes are properly fed. This is a point of emphasis for Baker-Watson.
“We want to make sure our student-athletes have access to three meals a day when we’re on the road,” Baker-Watson said.
For meals, student-athletes are either given a per diem of around $10 per meal or team meals are arranged ahead of time by the coach.
According to Ables the per diem gives more flexibility.
“[Coach Hauter] will give us a stipend … so we can eat whatever we want,” Ables said.
For pre-arranged team meals, coaches often choose healthy chain restaurants that are familiar to athletes.
“We generally choose places that are going to give them good nutrition,” said Baker-Watson.
All travel expenses such as transportation, food and lodging are a part of each athletic team’s budget, which is proposed by a coach and then granted or slightly altered by the athletic department.
In addition to regular season expenses, coaches must take into account the possibility of additional costs added on by competing in the North Coast Athletic Conference tournament at the end of a season.
If a team makes it beyond the NCAC tournament and into the National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament, some expenditures are picked up by the national organization.
“The NCAA gives a per diem amount for a specific travel party,” Baker-Watson said. “The per diem amount right now is $96 per day per student-athlete.”
While teams may not be happy to hit the road, student-athletes are taken care of.
Ables said, “We’ve had hotels that are like ‘wow’, this is a nice hotel.”