The Ralphie Report Road Trip to The Bay Area - Buffs Lacrosse edition

In the second game, we faced off with the Fighting Brainiacs of Palo Alto- the Stanford Cardinal. To be honest, this was decided before the face off. Colorado travels 59 players. Stanford has 18. That isn’t fair. One of Stanford’s coaches was in awe of our travelling party at the Sonoma Game. He just kept muttering, "must be nice…" over and over while scouting. Yeah, it is nice. We started out with a subtle 6-3 after 1, but it was bound to get ugly. And it did. We led 17-5 at the half before pulling off the throttle. The highlight of the game, quite literally, was #22 Reilly Seidell reeling off a number of And1 MixTape level goals. His one-timers were spectacular. The final score was 23-12 in favor of the good guys

One odd thing of note was the layout of Stanford’s field. It runs perpendicular to a major road and running path, and does not have nets behind the goal. We saw numerous errant shots hit cars, both driving and parked. Once I saw a car get missed by about a car length and a half that had an open passenger window. That could do some real damage. Not to mention the joggers running by with no clue what’s going on. Getting hit with a lacrosse ball hurts. Badly. If I was a Stanford student, not only would I be much smarter than I am in reality, but I would also be running a gambling racket throwing odds on cars getting wanged. Father-Of-Jace Todd Gan talked to a Stanford coach, who said that the school wouldn’t do anything until someone dies, which… what? Nets are pretty cheap to buy, and you can rent them just for game day if you want. Seems very short sighted and stupid. They also had a bunch of small children who were shagging balls and way to close to the sidelines, barely paying attention. It seemed dangerous to me. Anywho…

Other players I noticed this weekend were #12 Greg Kelsic, who seemed to be all over the place. I don’t know and don’t care what his stats are, but when I saw the ball, I saw #12 right there in the mix. The other player who stuck out to me was Blake Erwin, #8, who is fast as hell and nasty. He plays like a tiny cartoon Tasmanian Devil.

The Ralphie Report caught up with midfielder Griffin Bohm to get his thoughts:

Last weekend was a ton of fun. It's always good going out to California because so many guys have connections out there and it's an opportunity for them to see their families and it's always a pleasure to sweep the weekend. Plus we got the added bonus of a trip to In n Out

Priorities!

For this weeks dispatch from our player correspondent, I asked Fraser The Younger to describe what travel is like for a club sports athlete:

Considering I’ve only traveled with this team twice, this report is some experience; some more tales from upperclassmen. Effectively travel for a club team, do to the logistical nightmare of transporting, feeding, and housing fifty plus people, is a wait, then rapidly move type game. By this I mean there is a lot of downtime between arriving somewhere and departing for the next destination. We move. We wait. We wait some more. We move again. More waiting. Possibly more waiting. And again we move. This is just the way it is when trying to schedule so many moving operations, meetings, and practices. With all these components any set back in one will disrupt the next unless these buffers are intermediately placed. For the accommodation star rating our staff does a superb job of using our meager budget to find comfortable hotels and feed fifty-five heavily exercised, starving athletes well. From here are days consist of film sessions, walkthrough practices, and decompressing, mentally preparing for the upcoming games. Downtime is perfect for catching up on class reading, studying, or writing your biography (It’s basically just prolonged waiting)

Rooms are assigned by the coaching staff. I believe based somewhat off position and year, but not entirely. We have four people to a room with two queens, possibly a pullout couch. Food is a mixture of different restaurants and continental breakfasts. Chipotle, Italian, and Pizza are more frequent

I’ve now travelled twice with the Buffs, and the process is fascinating to me. Defensive coordinator Marty Taffett told me that the team travels a day early because once their was a problem with the plane and half their squad got left behind, and their accommodations are more in line with the road trips I took in college (6 guys sharing 2 beds in Mexico!) than with what you would expect from a college athletics program. Such is life in the club sports world. And we’ve got it good. I learned that Sonoma took a bus from NorCal to San Diego, and then Arizona, and their hotel in Arizona was riddled with roaches, bed bugs, and one room had blood on their bathroom floor. And their team doesn’t allow parents to stay in the same hotel as the players, which, as far as I can tell, parents would not want to do anyway. But it’s convenient for us to take our kids to dinner. And the Holiday Inn Express was quite nice- even the biscuits and gravy I had for breakfast was solid.

Once again: folks, you’ve got three more chances to get on the bandwagon. There’s extra space on the wagon since we don’t have a band. This team is a national championship contender, behind an entire first-string attack line of all seniors (and a grad student) and a veteran goalkeeper. Yeah, it’s a club sport, but "Your National Champion Colorado Buffaloes" rolls off the tongue quite sweetly regardless, so get on board.

Next up is Westminster College on Friday at 7 PM. They haven’t played the best competition, but they dropped 29 on Utah, so our defense had better be ready. Next is Utah on Saturday, at 5 PM on Folsom Field. You can watch the spring football game and then go have a sandwich on the Hill, and come back to watch the Red Hot Buffs

Once more with feeling, from Griffin:

This weekend is a big one for us. Westminster is a rising threat, and the opportunity to play in Folsom is really special. This is a critical point in the season where we really have to focus on taking it one day at a time and taking care of business.

Finishing up the regular season is a game at Whatever Corporate Sponsor At Mile High in Denver on April 19^th at 6 PM. You can get your tickets at www.redhotbuffs.com. You can get tickets on game day at the box office as well. I mean, the game probably won’t sell out, but why risk it? Go Buffs!