Sports
By Eric Kolenich
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March 15, 2007
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.
