Behind The Scenes: Life on the Road as a Division 1 athlete.
What do student athletes go through on a daily basis? They have to keep up on their studies and perform to their best ability to bring home a win each week for their respected school. Basketball, football, soccer, hockey, rugby, you name it. Any college student athlete in any sport has a long week full of classes, practices, rehab, workouts, and scheduled games. Trust me, I know. No, I am not an athlete. I traveled with the St. Bonaventure Bonnies Women’s Soccer team to see what life on the road was truly like.
It was Friday, September 12th: The team boarded the bus at 10:45 a.m. to embark on a two and a half hour journey to Ithaca, New York.
On the bus, I expected a lot of pre-game preparation. There wasn’t much, other than the occasional nap in the middle of the aisle, studying, or doing chemistry homework. It just shows how hard these young women work. Student athletes have extremely jam packed, busy schedules. That’s one conclusion I came to on this ride.
About two hours into the trip, we stopped in Elmira, NY, which is 45 minutes out of Ithaca. Panera was the stop and the pregame meal. It was so busy that we had to eat on the bus. The most amazing part of this stop was that Coach faxed in a spreadsheet the night before of everything that the team wanted to eat. The players Panera bags even had stickers with their names on them. Talk about all-star treatment.
It was now about 1 o’clock in the afternoon as we were still sitting in the Panera parking lot eating our lunches. Every time someone looked out the window, you would see random bystanders taking pictures in front of the Bonaventure logo on the bus. I mean yeah, these people were probably taking pictures to send to relatives saying “Hey, look! I am in front of your sons/daughters teams bus!,” but the whole team got a kick out of it.
We finally left Panera in Elmira to head to Ithaca. The rest of the drive was painful for us all. “Porky,” the bus driver, nearly rear ended a tractor and kept swerving on the road causing stiff pre-game headaches for the team, and stress for me.
Finally after 17 jagged turns (Thanks, Porky) on Cornell’s campus, we made it. After the girls got off of the bus to head into the locker room. They went in to change into their jerseys and to get ready for the game. That took about 25 minutes, and after that it was time to hit the field.
The team took the field around 3:15 p.m. for warm-ups.
With kick-off at 4p.m. there wasn’t a lot of time to get loose so the girls got straight to business; and so did I. I have been filming the team all season so there wasn’t much new to me here other than the fact that I was on a different campus 143 miles away from Bonaventure.
It was now 4 o’clock and it was time for the Bonnies and Temple Owl’s to kick-off.
The game went back and forth the whole way. A lot of passing in the middle of the field and a few chances off of corner kicks were really the only highlights of a scoreless first half.
The second half was a lot more exciting. Temple opened up the scoring very early in the second half as Paula Jurewicz tipped a ball off of her foot that barely crossed the goal line. That would be the only goal of the game, and yes, I got it on camera.
The Bonnies did not go down without a fight however. The last 10 minutes of the game the Bonnies kept knocking on the door with chance after chance, including a shot by Bonnies Junior forward Lauren Hill that just nicked the post and trickled out-of-bounds. The Bonnies lost 1-0 but were resilient against an undefeated Temple squad.
The amount of parents and family members that showed up to cheer on the girls was amazing. For most of the girls, home is in Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Upstate New York. Christina Sarokon, the Bonnies Junior Goaltender from North Tonawanda, NY, and Molly Curry, a Senior forward from Wilson, NY, said their parents come to pretty much every game with it being at home or on the road.
Around 6:30 p.m. we headed back to the locker room, which was about a quarter of a mile from the field, so the team could shower and change. After about a half hour the team was finally ready. We got on the bus to head home around 7 p.m.
Once we got on the bus, Coach B. gave us the choice to choose between Moes and Chipotle for dinner. After the team waited in long lines at both restaurants, everyone brought their food back to the bus so we could hit the road back to Bonas. We were en route to Olean by 8:15pm.
On the way back, the girls talked about the game, listened to music, took naps, and ate cookies that one of the player’s mothers made for the team. Nothing out of the ordinary on the ride there or back.
Around 10:45 p.m., a long 12-hour day finally came to an end as Porky pulled the bus onto Bonaventure grounds. The athletic department doesn’t have the money to be putting the team up in hotels every night when they play on the road so the team has to do a bunch of these long day trips during the season.
A long day finally ended and the girls headed to their dorms, or off-campus homes but not before coach scheduled a practice for the next day. Well, I guess there isn’t a lot of time for sleep!
Michael Loffredo 