Entry #14 - 2/11/04

Time to depart for Florida.

As a coach you are always worried about if your team is prepared when you open the season. Have you covered every possible scenario? Do your players know where they are supposed to be in every situation? Are your players mentally and physically ready? As a coach I never am comfortable at the beginning of the year. When you have a new group together for the first time, it is a mystery how things will turn out. We were only able to be outside for about five full days. Fundamentally I felt we were okay, but not having enough live game competition was a big concern to me. Nevertheless and despite my concerns, we boarded the bus and headed for Tampa.

Traveling with your teammates is one of the great perks of being a college athlete. I have many great memories of good times when I was a player and going on road trips. Back then there were no lap top computers, cell phones, video games, CD players, VCR’s or DVD’s on the bus. If you were real lucky, you may have had a “walkman” radio and even then it was always tough to pick up radio stations. Only a few guys actually had a “walkman” with a cassette player. If you didn’t own your own radio, you could buy a set of headphones at the store for maybe $5.00 and plug it into your teammates radio and listen along with him. Whenever you found a good song you would signal to the rest of the guys what station it was on and everybody would tune in. Coaches always like the bus to be quiet, so we would all sing along to the same song under our breath. Coach Port was always yelling at us to keep it quiet. I remember when we beat Miami to go to Omaha, Coach Port had an interview after the game and was asked what he thought his players were going to do to celebrate. He said, “This group will probably sing the whole way back to Charleston. I don’t know why but these guys like to sing.” He was right and to this day when I drive down the road every once in a while I will hear a song on the radio and it will immediately take me back to a memory of me and my teammates.

Not having all that technology also forced us to talk with each other. We would have some great conversations. Back then you really got to know your teammates. You discussed each other’s families, where you were from, what it was like growing up, what your hobbies were, high school heroics, girls, current events, and of course arguments of your favorite professional teams and players. You name it we talked about it. On the bus there were no secrets. The other thing we did was collect baseball cards. My generation grew up collecting cards; so most of us already had a nice collection at home. When we would stop for a “pit stop” at a convenience store, everyone would buy baseball cards and then on the bus make trades. It was a great way to pass the time. Being able to watch a movie or use a lap top computer on the bus back then would have been nice at times, but to this day, most of my strongest friendships in my life were created and solidified due to the time my teammates and I spent together traveling on a bus to a sporting event.

Despite a chance of rain the weather could not have been better when we arrived in Florida. We were able to work out at USF’s field on Thursday and it was good to stretch out our legs and familiarize ourselves with the surroundings. After the workout and a team dinner we went and saw the movie “Miracle” about the 1980 U.S. Hockey that shocked the world by winning the Gold Medal. I thought it was a great movie and hoped it would inspire our ball club to play at a high level over the weekend. I never sleep well the night before a game and this night was no different. Opening Day was just a few hours away. The “butterflies” in my stomach were starting to arrive. Until next time…

Coach Skole