Travel As A College Athlete

Just like yachting, my time as a college athlete was never fully understood by most. My closest friends, family, but mostly, all of my college professors, literally had no idea the commitment I was obligated to while still in school full-time. 

Don’t get me wrong though. I can genuinely say I loved every minute as a collegiate soccer player, but shit it was also tough! Honestly, there are an abundance of aspects I want to share someday, but today I’m just going to talk about the travel side of being a collegiate athlete.

Of course, I have to include that this was just my personal experience. A lot of schools run soccer programs in a very similar way to CSU, yet depending on the school, the sport and the level things might be different.

Season Rundown

Official preseason began around August 1st. Everyday for the next 2 weeks we’d have two-a-day practices. Wake up, test, practice, weights, meeting, eat, rest, practice, eat, sleep, repeat. It’s vigorous, but also a great way to bond with the team. You literally have to do everything together and have no other energy to do anything else. Ah bonding.

However, once season started which ran mid August-October, we had games twice a weekend typically on Fridays and Sundays with practice everyday in between. Except Mondays, we had Mondays off. The NCAA legally has to give student athletes one full day off. T god.

The first half of season was dedicated to non conference games (random teams around the country that would make for good matches to prep for conference games). I looked up my old schedules and found all of the states we traveled to for those games: Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, Oregon, Washington State, Kansas, and Arizona.

The second half of season was dedicated to Mountain West Conference games. The Mountain West Conference consisted of teams from California, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Wyoming and Colorado. We’d play every team once and every year we traded off with these teams to play at home or away.

Business Trips

So assuming you made the 18 person travel roster, every Thursday that we had an away game we were excused from class (not assignments or exams, that would too sweet) so we could travel to the away school.

Coaches organize all of your travel, book the flights, hotel rooms, pick out places to eat, handle the rental cars; It’s really fantastic. So all you have to do is… REMEMBER YOUR UNIFORM, CLEATS, CONES, BALLS AND PINNIES. If you couldn’t tell we’d always overlook that part.

Since most of our away games were pretty far, we’d get a CSU coach bus that would drive all 23 of us, staff included, to the airport. Hop on our (normal coach) flight and arrive at the hotel near the school a couple hours later to rest up for tomorrow’s night game.

Weekend Itinerary

A weekend in a nutshell would then follow as such:

If we had the time, our coaches would usually try and give us a chance to see a little bit of these places in between our busy schedules too. We had a few bus drivers who doubled as tour guides, a lot of team dinners at teammates homes if they were from near by and sometimes a couple hours to tour around after Sunday games if we had already check out of our hotel.

When we punched our ticket into our conference tournament for the first time in program history our coaches even let us loose on THE LAS VEGAS STRIP FOR 5 HOURS. UNHEARD OF! LET ME TELL YOU I’LL NEVER FORGET THAT!

It was the best of times

Reading this back it all sounds pretty damn great. Still, don’t underestimate the challenges of balance though. It was very hard to have a life outside of soccer. I honestly didn’t really have solid friends other than my teammates until my 5th year. A lot of people also really struggled to learn on their own and keep up with assignments while traveling. Don’t forget about the physical aspect as well. You had to stay up late to finish an assignment after playing 180+ minutes this weekend? Pshh no one cares. Just practice. There really is such a stigma around college athletics and mental health. I’m glad to see things are starting to change a bit.

I know it sounds so cheesy, but it’s true so shut up and listen. I don’t remember the scores of most games or how many minutes I played, but I do vividly remember those long bus rides especially when Sydney Hall would willingly eat dairy with no bathroom insight and then remember how lactose intolerant she is. Or times with my team sitting in the airport when Taylor and AP tried to board the wrong plane. And of course pranks pulled at the hotels like pie-ing Carol in the face in Boise. Such a good sport. Check out my TikTok for some video insight.

I am so grateful for my time as a student-athlete at CSU. It taught me a great deal about relationships, time management, communication, hard work, dedication and fighting for what you believe in. Not to mention, it’s also given me some of my best friends to this day.

Since I’ve graduated, Colorado State University was gifted over $5 million dollars to invest in women’s sports. The donation has been used to build a new sports complex specifically for Softball and Soccer. If you have the chance I would definitely go check out a game this season at the new complex. Who knows maybe you’ll see me there!