The longest distance the Penn State men's lacrosse team will have to travel from University Park this season is a weekend trip to Amherst, Mass., for a game against University of Massachusetts -- a 406-mile bus ride that mapquest.com estimates will take them about six hours, 40 minutes.

The University of Denver men's lacrosse team isn't so lucky.

Denver's squad will be trekking more than 1,500 miles to play the Nittany Lions in Holuba Hall on Saturday night -- and that's not even the longest trip they'll take this season.

Denver's team -- fittingly named the "Pioneers" -- will journey nearly 22,000 total miles to get to away games and back between now and when they finish up the regular season in May. In the sport of lacrosse, which has long been an East Coast phenomenon, the University of Denver's team is relatively isolated. Their closest opponent this season is the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, where they played an exhibition game last weekend.

Their next closest? Notre Dame, located more than 1,000 miles away in South Bend, Ind., meaning they have to fly to almost every away game.

Penn State coach Glenn Thiel said a weekend-long trip can be pricey. He estimated that a weekend trip (his team took one to play Denver in 2004) cost the team $20,000 for air travel, meals and lodging for his players and coaching staff.

"The airplane flights -- you don't necessarily get them at great rates," Thiel said. "It's a lot of money when you're taking a big group."

Jamie Munro, Denver's head coach, would not comment on how much money his team required for travel throughout the season.

Teams don't get any help paying their travel bills from the NCAA during the regular season. The NCAA only picks up the travel bills when teams take trips to national championship games and Division I championship games. According to the association's bylaws, "the official traveling parties" also get "per diem" allowances for the postseason.

Cost aside, it might seem that all the traveling can be physically draining on the team. Last year, Denver finished the regular season 9-0 at home and 3-4 on the road. However, Munro is reluctant to say whether the travel has a negative impact.

"When you're a growing program, you're either good enough to win, or you're not," Munro said.

Looking back over the last few seasons, Munro cited a few close games his team played on the road against strong opponents that could have gone either way.

"It's like: What's the difference in one-goal games? Is it because you're home or away, or is it how good you are?" Munro said.

Thiel said that he has taken his team on two trips to the University of Denver during his 30-year tenure. The Lions took a weekend trip to Denver in 2004 -- they boarded a plane to Denver on a Friday afternoon, played on Saturday, and were back to University Park by Sunday.

The first trip however, in March 2000, took place during Penn State's spring break, and also included a stop at nearby Air Force.

Having to make two stops stretched the trip to about five days, Thiel said, and the higher-than-normal altitude of the Rocky Mountain region started to affect his players.

"It was OK the first day or two," Thiel said of the altitude. "And then it hits you."

Munro said that living and practicing in Denver doesn't really give his team an advantage when they travel to the East Coast. Lacrosse, he said, isn't the type of sport where athletes need to train at high altitudes.

"In sports like ours, I don't think it really does anything," Munro said. "If we were racing the Penn State guys in a marathon, we'd have a big advantage."