Passion Blog- Traveling with the Team

Traveling is always a stressful experience, especially flying. You have to make sure you don’t forget anything, follow the rules for liquids in carry-ons, stand in long lines, go through security, sit next to people that smell or are obnoxious, and get claim your luggage. Doing all that with just your family, 4-5 people, is stressful enough. Now imagine doing that with an entire hockey team, 35-40 people.

This weekend my team is flying to Missouri to play Lindenwood. We leave at 5am and drive about 4 hours to Baltimore-Washington International Airport. Then we get on the plane for an hour and a half plane ride. Normally our team takes a bus to our games because of the hassle of flying but Missouri is too far for our team to drive to.

Our staff has been working for weeks now to prepare us for the flight. They have to buy our tickets and make sure we all have seats on the plane. They also have to make sure we all have proper identification so that we will be allowed in the airport.

Our equipment manager is driving to Missouri by himself because we can’t take a lot of the stuff we need on the plane, for example the skate sharpening machine and our rolling equipment storage. He leaves tonight at midnight so he can get there before us and set everything up.

The airport is going to be an extremely stressful process with an entire team. First there are a lot of people to keep on the same page and in the same are so no one misses the flight or get lost. For traveling we all have to wear the exact same thing and have the exact same bags. We aren’t allowed to use any other bags besides the ones given to us by the team. The same outfits and bags help us stick together and makes it easier to find our own bags when claiming them. This also allows people to identify us better while we are in public. A big thing for us is publicity while we are traveling, we like to take the opportunity to make as many people aware of us as possible. Walking through an airport with people coming from all over the nation is a perfect chance for us to show our Penn State Pride.

Another plus on traveling so far away from Penn State for me is that we are closer to my parents so they are able to come to our games! I am so excited to see them again. If you remember one of my previous posts my family came to my first home game series. Sadly I haven’t seen them since then. I am especially thankful that I get to see my family this weekend because I don’t get to go home for Thanksgiving so its nice to see them around this time of year. Overall this should be a fun weekend even though the traveling might be a little stressful!

Leave a Reply