Road trip confidential

Backroading by bus with the Cornell women's gymnastics team

By John Walters

Click here to get the entire issue of Sports Illustrated On Campus in digital format.

Team road trips, like the athletes who take them, come in all shapes and sizes. Whereas Division III Washington University's women's volleyball squad walks the half mile to Fontbonne U. for matches, Miami of Ohio's synchronized skating team recently ventured to Milan, Italy, a distance of 4,500 miles, for a competition.

We tagged along with two teams -- one (Kansas men's hoops) a revenue program representing a major Division I school, the other (Cornell women's gymnastics) a nonrevenue program from the Ivy League -- for their respective journeys, clambering aboard with no expectations, agendas or judgments. We simply let the trips fall where they may.

Mile 0: Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.,Saturday, Feb. 7, 7:48 a.m.

The Big Red stuff themselves into cramped rows and work on makeshift desks. Naomi Harris

The motor coach sits outside Teagle Hall as the gymnasts climb aboard toting pillows, snacks, overnight bags and books. On the windows inside, junior Allison Betof, one of seven premeds in this 16-gymnast delegation, tapes copies of a poem that she has written.

We're off to Pitt and West Virginia for
Meets numbers four and five.
We're ready to step up and hit,
For a new team record we'll strive!

"The poems get better," says Betof apologetically, "as school gets harder."

At Cornell the latter is a given. Academics are only part of the challenge, however, when you are a member of an Ivy League athletic team (read: no scholarships). During the next 40 hours Betof and her teammates will travel 856 miles by bus through four states, two wrong turns, one blizzard and a failed rendition of Tiny Dancer. In the midst of their peregrinations they will compete in two meets. With the exception of a Sunday brunch, meals will consist of sandwiches, soups and salads on a total budget, according to coach Paul Beckwith, of "around $3,000."

If they are lucky, they may get some homework done as well.

"Does anybody want hard-boiled eggs?" asks Rachel Goldberg, a senior premed majoring in biopsychology, as the bus slips out of Ithaca en route to Pittsburgh, where the Big Red will have a meet in 11 hours. Sophomore Cathy Schnell, yet another premed, slips a tape of Smallville into the bus's VCR. Goldberg, who has been accepted to Vanderbilt medical school, glances upward, then back at her psychology notes.

"Our team GPA was 3.67 last year," says the youthful Beckwith, 50, in his 10th season as Cornell's coach. "Since I've been here every single girl, with one exception, has gotten into her first choice of grad school."

You might think of these tumblers, given their grades and their snack of choice, as eggheads. Not so. Junior Dani Inwald sings with the campus a cappella group, The Chordials. Senior Shellen Glotz is an accomplished chef who will bake desserts for the All-Ivies banquet on Feb. 27. Last year a few of the gymnasts even installed a Jacuzzi in their living room, but the bubbles led to troubles after a hot-tub party with the Big Red wrestling team.

"That hot tub was a petri dish of bacteria," says assistant coach Melanie Dilliplane. "The girls got all sorts of rashes, like impetigo, which is difficult to hide wearing a leotard."

As the bus rumbles through a blizzard in western New York, Dilliplane pops in a tape of Zoolander. Before long textbooks with titles such as The Origins of Indigenism and The Outlines of Entomology snap shut. Faces turn to the overhead screens to watch Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) spew lines -- apropos in this setting -- such as, "I'm pretty sure there's a lot more to life than being really, really good-looking."

Mile 363: Panera Bread, Pittsburgh, Saturday, 2:12 p.m.

Being small is an advantage when trying to catch some z's on a bus. Naomi Harris

"Wake up, people, we're here for lunch," Beckwith announces. "However long it takes."

Since the meet with Brown, Rutgers and Pitt does not begin until 7 p.m., the Big Red bivouacs at a bakery for a few hours and shares stories of studying abroad. Junior Meghan Miller spent last semester in Copenhagen while classmate Inwald was in Seville, Spain. Co-captain Stefi Daehler, a senior, informs me that she spent last year in Ghana researching a thesis on men who have multiple wives.

Your thesis is on polygamy? "Actually, it's polygyny," says Daehler. "Polygamy is a general term for anyone who has multiple spouses. Polygyny refers to one male, many wives."

I knew that.

During the short ride to Fitzgerald Fieldhouse, the bus transforms into Extreme Makeover-meets-Kerri Strug as the gymnasts apply makeup and glitter to one another. Curlers are removed from coifs and replaced with ribbons bearing motivational phrases such as GO BIG RED and WOOPAH! (long story). Ponytails are virtually shrink-wrapped against scalps. Junior Larissa Calka disdains the beauty salon treatment. "I got glitter in my eyes before the last meet," she says. "It really burned."

Mile 414: Somewhere between Pittsburgh and Morgantown, W.Va., Saturday, 10:21 p.m.

During the 80-minute drive to Morgantown a few of the gymnasts in the back of the bus cut out red stars from construction paper to hang on their hotel room doors later tonight. "When we were in Providence a couple weeks ago," says Betof, "someone stole all the stars off our doors. Who would do that?"

Up front Beckwith is perusing the score sheet; the Big Red finished third. Susan Ives, the team trainer, recalls a story about former gymnast Shannon Weiman, who had the squad's top GPA from 2000-03. "I gave her a urine test last year to see if she was hydrated enough," says Ives, "and she failed it. When I gave her the results, her response was, 'Can I retake the test tomorrow morning?'

"I realized," Ives concludes, "that failing a test was a new experience for Shannon."

Shortly after 11 p.m. the team bus pulls into the Radisson in Morgantown. The West Virginia athletic department has comped the rooms, since the invitation to this meet had come at the last minute. "They invited us after our budget was finalized," says Beckwith. "We wouldn't have been able to afford it."

Beckwith is not complaining. The bus, for example, is quite an upgrade from his early years at Cornell. On a trip to Vermont in the mid-'90s the squad chartered an airport shuttle bus. "It was pouring rain, and the roof started leaking," recalls Beckwith. "Some of us had to sit under a tarp most of the way."

Mile 548: Maryland, heading east on Interstate 68, Sunday, Feb. 8, 6:04 p.m.

After two meets in less than 24 hours the Big Red (which rebounded at West Virginia with a 191.975 team score, the second-highest in school history) are heading back to Ithaca. A few parents who had made the pilgrimage to West Virginia have stocked the bus with brownies, a monster chocolate chip cookie and assorted fruit. Magically, it would seem, the team's hard-boiled-egg reserves have also been replenished.

"Paper Plate Awards!" announces Daehler, the co-captain. On the return leg of a road trip each gymnast traditionally receives a paper plate with a couplet denoting her contribution to the squad at the meet.

"This award goes to Randi," says Daehler, referring to freshman Randi Bisbano, who set a school record in the all-around (39.1) in this afternoon's competition.

"We know you don't really like to be flattered,
But what can we do, with the records you shattered?"

"Thanks for the pity laughs," says Daehler, after every gymnast is honored. With that, overhead lights are switched on as laptops are powered up and books cracked open. Yellow highlighters are uncapped. Headphones are donned, primarily to block the noise of O Brother, Where Art Thou? playing overhead. Goldberg and Inwald review notes for an upcoming psychopathology exam.

"We've got about five more hours on the bus," says Betof. "I'll be studying most of the way home and then probably an hour or two after that."

The poems may not get better. School will definitely get harder.

SI ON CAMPUS Sports Illustrated On Campus, a new magazine covering college sports and collegiate lifestyles, is available as an insert in 72 major college newspapers across the country every Thursday throughout the school year. Click any of the links below to see selected content from the latest issue, or click here to get the entire issue in digital format. • Cover story: Livin' large with the Kansas Jayhawks • Cover story: Backroading by bus with Cornell gymnasts • Road Trip: University of New Mexico • Previous issue: Feb. 12, 2004

Issue date: February 26, 2004