Alaskan travels

By Jon Schwartz

It's a long and winding road that leads from Fairbanks, Alaska to Ann Arbor. By air, it's a 13-hour experience that starts in Fairbanks and heads to Anchorage, Alaska and then to Seattle, next to Detroit and finally to the home of the University of Michigan.

It's a grueling 4,200-mile journey that, when combined with the four-hour time difference, is extremely difficult on the body.

But for the Alaska-Fairbanks hockey team, it's just another roadtrip to the Midwest.

One of the cornerstones of the acronym CCHA is the first letter - Central, as in the central United States. Compared to the league's other 11 teams, Fairbanks, Alaska is anything but central, but that didn't stop the Nanooks from being granted admission to the conference before the 1992-1993 season on a preliminary basis, and then becoming a full member before the 1995-1996 season.

Since that time, the players have had to deal with exhausting weekend roadtrips that require tremendous amounts of physical adjustment and maturity as they develop their bodies to handle the travel.

"I'm really not used to it quite yet," right wing Paul Austin said. "Being a freshman, it's something new. I played junior hockey in Manitoba, and most of our games were pretty close. It's something new, but it's an experience and it's quite exciting."

Somehow, the players do find a way to get accustomed to what is a hellish amount of work and commitment. By the time they reach their senior year, they develop an appreciation for the experience that playing for the program affords them.

"I love coming down here - It's just a lot of fun," assistant captain Ryan Reinheller said. "I've never been down here except to play hockey and now it's my fourth year. I don't really worry about the jetlag anymore. It's just kind of routine now. I just come ready to go."

But the Nanooks' story is far more interesting than the team's travel schedule. There are so many intriguing questions surrounding the program that makes it by far the most unique of the 12 CCHA schools.

With only one other Divison I hockey program in the state, the Nanooks were in many ways a team without a center when they began play in 1979. They played different schools and clubs from around the United States and Canada before becoming a charter member of the Great West Hockey Conference in 1985, along with Northern Arizona, Alaska-Anchorage and U.S. International.

While the Nanooks were successful in their new conference, winning the GWHC crown in 1988, they chose to head for the greener pastures of the CCHA, college hockey's midwestern conference, in 1992. Meanwhile, Alaska-Anchorage, the other Division I program in Alaska, joined the Western College Hockey Association.

But convincing the league's members that accepting them into the league would be a good idea was one of the tougher tasks that the Fairbanks athletic department faced.

An agreement was reached that the school would subsidize CCHA teams' trips to the Last Frontier. Now, Nebraska-Omaha, the newest member of the conference, is the only team that pays to fly to Fairbanks.

But for the team that makes the transcontinental flight the most, the struggles are on a much larger scale than adjusting to and paying for the flights.

Often the student gets left out of the phrase student athlete. For Alaska-Fairbanks hockey players, playing about 15 games a season in the Midwest makes being a student extremely difficult.

When Michigan goes on the road to play a conference game at a school such as Ohio State, the team leaves Ann Arbor on Friday, plays the Friday night game, stays over through the Saturday night contest and drives home either Saturday night or Sunday. It translates into one class day missed, and since most athletes don't schedule classes on Friday, there is little concern for missing anything.

Things are not so easy up in Alaska.

This past weekend's trip to Ann Arbor saw the Nanook players leaving Fairbanks at 11 p.m. Wednesday night, Alaska time. They arrived at Detroit Metro Airport at 3:55 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday.

The team practiced at Yost from 7:00 to 7:50 p.m. before heading out for a team meal and then retiring to the Days Inn Ann Arbor for the night.

"I'm looking forward to getting to bed tonight," freshman Ryan Campbell said upon landing in Detroit.

Because of the long travel times, the players have to find ways to make their studies fit in with their strenuous schedules.

"We always try to bring some books on the road," Reinheller said. "If we're going to miss anything, we always make it up when we get back. We just try to work with (our professors) and they work with us."

To play for Fairbanks requires a motivation toward work that few student athletes around the country can claim to have. Especially when the team was on the road for three out of the past four weekends.

The Nanooks' last road trip before Michigan was a trip to Bowling Green on October 27-28. With a showdown in Columbus the next weekend, the team chose not to go back to Fairbanks only to return to the Midwest the next weekend.

Instead, the Nanooks stayed in Columbus through the two game series with the Buckeyes and in the process, missed eight days of classes.

Still, the players find a way to persevere.

"It's not too bad," sophomore goaltender Lance Mayes said. "The teachers understand our circumstance and they help us deal with that. They let us make up our tests and so forth.

"Even last week, we had study sessions in Ohio State so that allowed us time to use the computers and catch up on things that needed to be done."

With all of the trials of playing for Alaska-Fairbanks, one would think that a weekend at home is complete bliss for the players.

Oddly, according to coach Guy Gadowsky, that is not always the case.

"In Fairbanks, hockey is king," he said. "If you're a Division I hockey player in Fairbanks, everybody knows you so there are a lot of demands on your time and this way they get a chance to relax, catch up on some studies and catch up on some rest.

"I actually look forward to it to get some rest and I think some of the guys feel the same way. There are no rinks, there's no weight room and no classrooms."

Sometimes, there's also the added bonus of escaping the frigid Fairbanks weather.

When the players got off the plane on Thursday they were wearing their standard issue short-sleeve polos with the Alaska-Fairbanks logo. Few wore a coat to face the 40-degree temperatures.

The predicted weather for Fairbanks this week is about 10- to 15-degrees colder than that in Ann Arbor. But during the later winter months, when the average temperature in Fairbanks is around 12 degrees, a trip to Ohio State might just as well be Miami.

Junior Bobby Andrews summed up the difference in climate very simply.

"It's a lot colder there than it is here, that's for sure," he said.

And at the end of the day, the experience of playing for Alaska-Fairbanks is about as expansive as they come. For a predominantly Canadian group of college students, the program offers the chance to visit parts of the United States - say, Ferris State's Big Rapids - that probably fall short of typical vacation spots.

"It's a good experience. I'd just as soon be closer, but this is what you have to do so you might as well do it well," Andrews said.

PETER CORNUE/Daily

The Alaska Fairbanks hockey team travels from Alaska to the schools of the CCHA in sometimes exhausting fashion.