For most athletes competing in college athletics, the actual grind of the season is not on the field of play, but in the travel that each team must undertake to play away games. While the rest of the campus relaxes in their dorm rooms and watches TV, athletes stay in two-star hotels with an unpleasant smell emanating from down the hall.

Playing college sports is a balancing act between the sport, academics, and a social life; traveling all across the country adds more to the athlete’s plate. Teams often have to deal with very cramped buses, sharing hotel rooms with multiple people, and eating at fast-food restaurants.

One of these athletes is Olivia Gilbertson, a junior women’s soccer player, who recalls a time back when she was in college in England and a field hockey trip that turned sideways.

“So when I was in sixth form, we had an annual first team hockey trip with the boys and girls team to Bath for a tournament and we were driving there and the boys were on one bus and the girls were in another and we were on one of the main roads in England one of the highways and suddenly our bus starts to like jutter and feels like it’s breaking down so we pull into a lay-by and the boys bus has to pull in behind us. It turns out our bus had broken down, and we were stuck in a lay-by on the side of the fast-moving highway. So we all climbed up into the trees to make sure we didn’t get hit, and then we had to wait for another bus to come from the school to take us, but our game was scheduled for about two hours later. 
So we ended up hijacking the guy’s bus, which was actually nicer than ours anyway, and taking that to our game, leaving them stranded with a broken-down bus, waiting about three hours for the next bus to come and pick them up,” Gilbertson said.

These struggles can also be seen on the buses, as Dawson Talbott, a senior football player, notes that people often struggle for space on the return trips from away games.

“With bags all over the place, knees in your back, and you’re lucky if you can stretch your legs for five minutes, the buses get so packed on away trips that some guys end up sleeping on the floor,” Talbott said.

The games are also challenging for athletes who travel to games during the winter months. Nash Kell, a junior football player, recalls a time when his friends returned from an away trip to Upper Iowa University.

“My friends couldn’t believe what we had gone through after that game, man. The field was essentially made of ice after it rained and then snowed. We had just lost badly hours earlier, and now we were soaked, freezing, and still had a five-hour bus ride ahead of us,” Kell said.

From smelly hotels to cold games, athletes have some travel stories that can seem unheard of, but all of that hardship has the opportunity to be worth it with a conference championship at the end of the year.