The UT baseball squad arrives late on Saturday night from their most recent road trip to Stillman College. The Spartans are 5-0 so far this season on the road. |Samantha Battersby/ The Minaret
Playing on the road isn’t easy. Ask any Major League Baseball player that has to travel to the opposite coast four to six times a year. NBA players, even in an abbreviated season, spend their free nights traveling from Portland to Oklahoma City to Boston. It’s an arduous season, no matter the sport.
But throw in up to eighteen credit hours for those players and it gets even harder.
From February 10th to the 17th, the University of Tampa baseball team plays five games on the road. They had three in two days against Georgia College, and then a doubleheader three hundred miles away in Alabama at Stillman College the next weekend. They won all five games.
“Playing on the road is tough,” Senior pitcher Nate Titus said. “You don’t get to sleep in your own bed and you don’t get the comfort of playing in your own ballpark.”
Comfort aside, there’s a lot more that goes into playing on the road. The Spartans, as well as any other team that travels long distances in a season, find that getting the ‘lay of the land’ is as important as performance.
“Playing more than one game on the road at a different field, you have to know how to play the field and get used to it,” senior infielder Tony Suarez said. “By the second game you know how it plays so you can feel comfortable.”
Getting used to the field entails how the ball bounces on the infield to getting comfortable with the warning track. The team usually takes longer warm-ups during away games.
They field grounders to gauge the speed of the infield grass, and the outfielders get accustomed to how much room they have at their backs. Not to mention the pitcher’s mound which can take quite a while to get used to, in terms of divot positioning for both feet.
One of the many challenges that student-athletes face on the road, is finding time for school work. Weekends spent on the diamond, in the hotel, and on the bus can sometimes distract the players from their studies. But it becomes more apparent that the Spartans take their academics as seriously as their country’s pastime.
“[Being on the road] definitely affects me more in the classroom, because the weekend is when I usually do my homework,” Titus said.
“And if we leave on a Thursday that makes it even tougher, because I miss my classes.”“You can get behind on schoolwork, but you have to know how to effectively manage your time,” said sophomore outfielder Zach Gawrych.
Off the field, there are some advantages to being on the road. It’s an excellent opportunity to build a good foundation for camaraderie. The players see one another on a daily basis, stay in hotels together and eat together.
“Road trips definitely build team chemistry, especially if we are winning,” Titus said.
“Being in the hotel together, long bus rides on travel day, and winning when facing adversity definitely creates chemistry; one of the most important factors, in my opinion, for winning a championship.”
The Spartans record reflects their dominance – they’re undefeated so far. And that team chemistry that they get the chance to work on while on the road is one of the main reasons they’re doing so well this year.
“We are always together,” Suarez said. “We have to see each other every day. It becomes your second family.”
The Spartans are looking to lengthen their strong winning streak to start the season.
It looks like the road play is going smoothly. It will need to stay that way – they play on the road six more times before March 3rd. They continue to take each game one at a time, but look forward to the comforts of their own field.
“The advantages of playing at home are knowing the playing surface, sleeping in your own bed, using your own facilities, playing in front of your home crowd,” Titus said.
They will be playing again at home on March 4th, to start a ten game home stand. After that, all of their away games are near home; Eckerd, Rollins and St. Leo.
After these long road trips to start the season, they’ll be able to sleep in their own beds for the remainder, with Spartan fans cheering every chance they get.
With a strong start like this, the fans will have plenty to cheer about the next time the Spartans take the field.
Greg Spracklin can be reached at gspracklin@spartans.ut.edu.
