Top-of-the-line hotels. Free food. Open air and the excitement of new cities, new schools and new challenges each weekend.
This is the life of your run-of-the-mill, everyday NCAA athlete at the University of Virginia -- a little nicer than the week-old pizza and lumpy mattresses most college students are used to.
Some teams, such as the basketball and field hockey squads, are lucky to travel once or twice a week to play a game at another school before hurrying back to Charlottesville and repeating the same schedule.
The football team, on the other hand, travels days before its game begins, with all its focus on one day and one game to prove its worth.
But the pinnacle of sports travel -- the road trip -- is reserved for baseball and softball.
Each weekend, the Cavalier baseball team plays three games against an ACC school.
That means three different starting pitchers have to be ready to go -- sophomore Jacob Thompson, freshman Matt Packer and junior Sean Doolittle are expected to play this weekend against North Carolina -- and the lineup has to have enough energy to hit the base paths running all weekend.
This schedule involves three times as much work and the potential for three times as much glory -- or three times as much sorrow. But each game has to be won one at a time.
"You've got to treat each game as its own," Virginia coach Brian O'Connor said. "The successful teams in college baseball are the ones that can handle the peaks and the valleys in a season."
Though O'Connor wants his players in the "Al Groh mindset" of one game at a time, from the coaching standpoint, consideration of the whole series always factors into decisions.
"There's a lot of managing that goes in to a three-game series," O'Connor said. "You're up by four runs -- do you pitch your best guys out of the bullpen or do you save them for maybe a closer game later?"
While Dave Leitao expects junior Sean Singletary to start every game, and Groh knows junior Chris Long is ready to go every Saturday, when O'Connor puts the ball in Thompson's hand, he's giving all he's got for the whole week. Bullpen pitchers are ready to go at a moment's notice, but often can't throw more than one or two days a week.
"My feeling is that if you have a chance to win a game on the road, you go for it," O'Connor said. "You worry about tomorrow tomorrow. If you go a little over .500 on the road and do your thing at home, you're going to have a chance to win this league."
And with each pitcher the Cavaliers face, they modify their approach.
"You make adjustments from Friday to Saturday to Sunday based on what type of team they are," O'Connor said. "Maybe on Friday you're facing their No. 1 who's a strikeout pitcher, and you have to bunt a little more because it might be a 3-2 game. Later in the series we might not have as much of a bullpen and we might need to swing the bats more because it might be more of a high-scoring game."
This weekend, the Cavaliers will have to balance between senior Robert Woodard, who models his game after high velocity pitchers like Roger Clemens, and freshman Alex White, who bases his approach off control expert Greg Maddux.
But once the work for the day is done, it's back to luxurious confines and the lifestyle of the rich and famous.
Senior right fielder Brandon Marsh spoke about the schedule that the players keep during the road-trips.
"Thursday, you travel down there," he said. "You practice there or you practice here, and then you leave so you have the night to sleep in the hotel and prepare for the game the next day."
Marsh said off the field, the team keeps busy, often seeing parents and going to dinner with teammates.
"We let things take a long time, because if the game is at 1 and is over at 4, you don't want to be sitting at the hotel for seven hours," he said. "It's a pretty social time."
O'Connor gives his wisdom to the team on the bus after the game, then gives players their space.
"They need their time away from the coaches," O'Connor said. "They need to be on their own and enjoy each other's company."
After the bus ride back to the hotel, players take their minds off the game for a little while, resting in the hotel, watching a little Sports Center and heading out for some fun. And of course, getting some work done when possible.
O'Connor, however, said he never takes his mind off the game, adding that after Virginia lost the opener in the road trip to Wake Forest, "it took all night and the next morning for me to flush that one out."
This weekend, the team will keep its eyes on the Cavalier basketball squad, traveling to Albany for the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Though NCAA athletes are not allowed to bet money on NCAA sporting events, Marsh says he imagines a few players will have their brackets ready to go this weekend with the potential of non-monetary competitions arising.
With four more ACC road trips in their schedule, along with an ACC tournament in Jacksonville and an anticipated trip to Omaha, the Cavaliers will have plenty of time to enjoy the food away from dining halls, rooms nicer than their own dorms and a chance to escape the somewhat monotonous life of Charlottesville.
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