Imagine taking a road trip to California this weekend. Leaving the snow banks and ice patches behind for the beaches and the warm weather. Sounds great, unless you're a member of the BYU baseball team, then it's not all it's cracked up to be.

For the first seven weeks of the season, the Cougars play 26 straight games on the road, all of them in California. The Cougars only get to fly three times this season, once to San Jose, once to San Diego and once to Albuquerque, other than that they travel by bus.

After 8500 miles and 150 hours to California and back, the road trips to the paradise, known as California, just aren't that much fun.

"It's tough to go out on a 14-hour bus ride and go out and play a three-game series and turn around four days later and do the same thing," coach Vance Law said. "That's very taxing."

The Cougars board the bus on Wednesday mornings for a Thursday, Friday, Saturday series. These trips only leave time for the players to go to class on Mondays and Tuesdays.

"The day's we're here, Monday and Tuesday," right-hander Justin Su'a said. "those are critical. That's when we have to go and talk to our teachers and make up all of our midterms at once that we've missed. You have to be really diligent."

Su'a said the coaches create a schedule to help the players find a balance between baseball and studying when they're on the road. The coaches schedule the players' study time, meals and curfew to help them keep up with there school, but no matter how much they study on the road, it just doesn't compare to being in class.

"The worst part is not being able to go to class and keep up with your school work," second baseman Wade Vest said. "Its so hard to go to school one or two days a week and be gone for five or six."

The Cougars have two road trips this season that are more than 10 days long. The players have to be persistent in getting their studying done on the road; sometimes the coaches even have to proctor tests on the road. On these long trips it can be easy to forget about school and just focus on playing and winning.

"When you're on the road trip, sometimes all you think is baseball, baseball, baseball and when you get home, it's like 'oh yeah, we're students as well'," Su'a said.

The players sometimes find it difficult to find balance in their lives when they spend so much time away from home. Nine of the 31 players are married, and leaving families behind can be hard. Senior right-hander Nathan Hess, who's been married for a year and a half and has a son, said the players have to learn to leave the personal elements of their lives off the field.

"Any human being is going to miss their family," Hess said. "You have tendencies to miss your wife, but at game time, you just have to put all of that aside and just focus on baseball."

When the team is on the road, in a sense they become a family. The long bus rides provide an opportunity for the players to get to know each other better.

"On a 12-hour bus trip, you can find out a lot about the people that are sitting around you," team captain Adam Wilkes said. "It helps us bond. It helps us stick together as one unit."

Vest said, "I think one of the best parts is just being with the other guys. You really get to know everybody really well and everybody becomes best friends."

Even though the team enjoys being around each other and growing closer together, this bonding time hasn't translated into many victories for the Cougars.

This season the Cougars have only won a handful of games on the road. The long road trips to start the season have traditionally been unkind to the Cougars. Last season, the Cougars started the season with 18 road games, winning only 6 of those. In 2002, the Cougars won nine of their first 22 road games. But the Cougars aren't making any excuses for losing so many games on the road.

"I talked to the guys and told them that's the hand we're dealt," coach Law said. "Nothing can change that. I can guarantee our opponent doesn't care, so for us to dwell on that and use that as something to fall back on is not an option."

Being from a colder weather area, the Cougars don't get to practice outside as much as the teams they play, which critics say affects the Cougars ability to compete early in the season on the road.

"With our new facilities here, [the weather] is not really an excuse," Hess said. "We can really do just about anything in the IPF we can do outside. I can't imagine there's other facilities in the nation that are this good."

Even though the Cougars don't make excuses about their road woes and are determined to win their games in California, they, like Dorothy, always remember, 'there's no place, like home, there's no place like home' as they look forward to their first home stand March 18-20 against UNLV.



Copyright Brigham Young University 5 Mar 2004