At practices this week, the Penn State ACHA Division I Icers were all smiles.
"We're excited to play at home," senior Keith Jordan said. "It's good to be back."
It's no surprise team morale is so high. Penn State is finally returning for a home weekend to play Liberty after three straight weekends on the road.
The upcoming home games allow the team to relax a bit more and allow them to focus on practicing hard rather than climbing onto a bus. During warm-ups earlier this week, there was more laughing and horse play than in past weeks. The players were calm and relaxed and so were the coaches.
The loudest sound in the building was the whistle and not head coach Scott Balboni, who typically yells much of practice.
Being home also ensures support from Icers fans that habitually pack the Greenberg Ice Pavilion during games on Friday and Saturday. It is a welcome change from the raucous Rhode Island and Illinois crowds, who tend to scream at the Penn State players incessantly.
During the away streak, Penn State faced Rhode Island, Navy and Scranton. Round trip, it added up to about 1,500 miles.
The team returns home between the weekends, but Jordan said that doesn't make it any less difficult to
be on the road for three weeks in a row.
"It's frustrating to always be away," Jordan said.
"It takes up a lot of
your time, and it can dig into school work."
Schoolwork isn't the only facet to which road trips can be detrimental. The games can also suffer early. Jordan said the first period of away games tends to be rough because players are still stiff from not moving on the bus. Extra time is needed for stretching and loosening up in general.
For longer trips, the team leaves a day early to offset the effects of a long bus ride. Using last week's trip to Rhode Island as an example, Balboni said the team left Thursday and traveled halfway to Providence before stopping at a hotel for the night. The remainder of the trip was fin-
ished after breakfast on Friday morning.
After the second game with the Rams was finished on Saturday, the team boarded the bus not long after and traveled through the night to arrive home around six on Sunday morning.
Balboni said it's tough to adjust to the schedule.
"It takes a pretty good toll on the guys and on the coaches," he said.
"Your routine gets disrupted by sleeping in hotels and moving equipment in and out of places all the time. And it's always tough to sleep on a bus."
Despite the disadvantages of being on the road for so long, Penn State has been stellar.
It didn't suffer a single loss in its last six away games and has only two losses in its last 10 away games. Balboni attributes the team's excellence to smart game plans and strong work ethic.
"We do an awful lot of hard work in the preseason that I don't think a lot of other teams do," Balboni said. "Six weeks at the beginning of the year is all dedicated to dry land and off-ice training. Having the guys in top physical shape helps us go on the road and still have legs and something left in the gas tank."
Senior Sean Kenney said even though the trips can start to drain on a player, they aren't as bad as some would think.
"In a way it's a good thing," he said. "It brings us closer together to spend a lot of time on the road with [each other] this early in the season."
The players have had plenty of time together on the road this season. The team has traveled roughly 3,164 miles. Trips to Drexel, Illinois, Scranton, Navy and Rhode Island have amounted to about 54 hours of bus time.
Penn State still has road games at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Delaware left on the schedule. The team will also lose the familiarity of a bus to fly out to battle Arizona State in early January. Balboni said he hopes to get his players in the best shape he can for future away games.
"We'll try to set up a situation where we have the best possible option to win," he said.
