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Bowling Green's Frederic Letourneau finds the back of the net against Alaska goalie Anton Martinsson during a game last season. The Falcons will make the 3,700-mile journey to Fairbanks this week.
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BGSU hockey's long haul to Alaska is a degree in learning

BLADE/ANDY MORRISON

BGSU hockey's long haul to Alaska is a degree in learning

BOWLING GREEN —This week, Bowling Green hockey will make an in-conference trip unlike anything else in Division I athletics.

The Falcons will play a two-game series in Alaska, a campus more than 3,700 miles from their own. For reference, their travel this week is about 400 miles longer than Hawaii-Wyoming football games in the Mountain West Conference. What’s more, this trek to Alaska will be their second of the season, as the Falcons played at Alaska-Anchorage in early November.

Now comes the visit to Fairbanks for games Friday and Saturday night.

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“Nobody has travel like this,” BG coach Chris Bergeron said, “and we have two Alaska teams in our league [WCHA].”

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Transporting Bowling Green’s hockey team from Point A to Point B and back, gear and all, and trying to win two games along the way has proven to be an art, no matter how many times they make the trip.

The Stuff

Scott “Scooter” Jess has made this trek from Wood County to Alaska enough to be a tour guide. This week will mark the longtime equipment manager’s 20th visit to Alaska, a unique task featuring a sport with tons of gear and a distance that forces compromise.

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“If I don’t get it right by now, you’d think in the back of your mind that I’ll never get it right,” Jess said.

Director of operations Jimmy Spratt devises a travel itinerary planned upward of six months in advance, and Jess has a tried-and-true checklist aimed at making the Falcons’ trip as compact and light as possible.

The Western Collegiate Hockey Association has a standard list of items that home teams provide to visitors that includes extra tape, toiletries, a glove dryer, and fans to dry damp equipment. The Alaska teams also provide a skate sharpener that saves Jess about 115 pounds.

On Tuesday night, players laid out everything to go in their individual equipment bags. In addition to their regular gear, they add practice jerseys and socks; game jerseys and socks; sweat towels for practice and games; and sweatpants, an atypical effort that saves about two bags each.

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Jess also leaves his standard equipment trunk behind because of weight, though some things are must-haves. Jess packs two bags for sticks, an extra equipment bag in case of breakage, two soft-sided bags filled with rubber containers — plastic cracks easily during transport — for his sharpening tools and extra steel.

By the end, Jess said BG wants to travel with 50 or fewer bags for the entire team.

“You’ve got to be a little bit restrictive as far as how many bags you take from trip to trip just because it’s money,” Jess said.

Usually, he said, BG will spend about $1,000 to $1,500 in overages, but the airlines have almost always been helpful during their trips. The ultimate goal is to give the players everything they need for two games — but to do so as lightly as possible when the airlines weigh their equipment.

“I usually like to ask Jimmy [Spratt], ‘Luck or no luck?’ ” Jess said. “And if he says, ‘Luck,’ I’m laughing all the way to the gate to board our plane for Alaska.”

The Schedule

Bowling Green’s biggest task is to be sharp when the puck drops at 11:07 p.m. EST on Friday night, which is easy to say and difficult to accomplish.

Senior forward Stephen Baylis will be making his fourth visit to Alaska. Jet lag often can sabotage the first game, and Baylis said jumping right into physical activity has been helpful in the past.

“I find that the sooner you start to get active and get the travel out of your legs, whether it’s riding a bike or something, it’ll work its way out of you before the game gets there,” Baylis said. “Sometimes people start flat when you take a big trip like that because it takes that much longer to get [jet lag] out of you.”

Bergeron and the BG coaches aim to make the schedule as normal as possible. The Falcons planned to leave from Detroit on Wednesday, a 12-hour excursion with a layover in Seattle. They were scheduled to arrive late Wednesday evening in Alaska, then jump right into hockey practice Thursday morning.

“The only way we know how is to get them in the Alaska-time mindset first thing Thursday morning when they wake up, then we go from there,” Bergeron said.

Typically, BG has a team function on Thursday night, such as going to a movie. Games are Friday and Saturday nights.

When the puck drops, the Falcons hope the travel grind shows up as little as possible, but it’s not easy. BG had a scoreless tie in its first game against Anchorage before winning in double overtime.

“I understand Friday night is not a light switch, and our team has proven it,” Bergeron said. “I’m not sure if there’s a college team out there where you can just flick a switch come Friday night and be right.”

The Return

At this stage of the season, Bowling Green hopes to stay as regimented as possible despite the enormous travel burden.

The Falcons are an NCAA tournament hopeful, ranked No. 10 in the PairWise rankings, and every game at this stage of the season matters. They play eight games against teams currently in the bottom 10 of PairWise rankings — Alaska, which will visit BG next month, accounts for half of those games — and a few unexpected losses could sabotage what has been a stellar season.

The return trip from Alaska often is the most difficult part of the journey. Many players will take a nap before Saturday’s game, but when the game ends, BG starts its return by leaving in the early morning hours and won’t return to campus until Sunday evening.

The haul from Alaska back to Bowling Green can be tough on the players’ routines.

“It’s just a full day of not sleeping well and not eating well,” Baylis said. “You’re walking around an airport all day, and some guys can sleep on the plane, but I’m not good with rest on planes, so it’s a rough trip for me.

“I usually try to grind it out or maybe get an hour of sleep, but when we get back, it’s even harder to get back into our routine because I just lost all this sleep and all these mealtimes.”

Bergeron said BG will give players Monday and perhaps even Tuesday off to recover from the trip. After the previous Alaska visit, the Falcons were sluggish the following Friday night, a 5-0 loss to Lake Superior State.

After returning this time, BG will play Ferris State for two games beginning Jan. 25.

Bergeron freely admits that he does not have all the answers for a four-day trip like this, but he said BG hopes to have learned from its November visit.

In four days, the Falcons will travel more than 7,000 miles, play two games that will end in the early morning hours of the Eastern time zone, and spend more than 30 total hours on planes, buses, and in airports.

Bergeron said the fact is, Alaska trips are difficult to gauge.

“The rest of it really is a crapshoot,” he said. “We go up there once a year, sometimes twice a year, and it’s something that’s not easy. It’s an imperfect science.”

First Published January 16, 2019, 9:56 p.m.

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Bowling Green's Frederic Letourneau finds the back of the net against Alaska goalie Anton Martinsson during a game last season. The Falcons will make the 3,700-mile journey to Fairbanks this week.  (BLADE/ANDY MORRISON)
Scott 'Scooter' Jess, the equipment manager for Bowling Green, has a regimented checklist to expedite the team's long trip to Alaska.  (The Blade/Andy Morrison)  Buy Image
Bowling Green goalie Ryan Bednard finds the puck at his knee as a scrum develops around him.  (BLADE/ANDY MORRISON)
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