POCATELLO, Idaho – From the outside, it might appear that traveling for football road games is just that: load up the team, trek hundreds of miles to the destination, unload and get ready for the game. However, each away game require extensive planning and packing, and there is a full department dedicated entirely to the planning, packing and execution of team travel. With three games down and one to go in a long stretch of away games, the ISU equipment department is firing on all cylinders.
"We get everything ready as far as what players wear on the field, underneath their uniforms…anything they have on out there," Equipment Manager
Tyson Munns said. "Every player packs their own bag and then we get them loaded on the bus [or plane], travel to the destination, unload the bags and take them to the locker room, separate the team into offense and defense and set up all of our equipment containers. All of that is really easy."
Packing, loading, unloading and unpacking may seem easy for an experienced equipment manager, as Munns has been running the ISU equipment room for four full football seasons, but it's more than that. Any equipment the players might need, the equipment team packs and travels. In fact, they bring along three giant equipment containers that includes extra uniforms, pants, shoulder pads, helmets, cleats and socks in every size, just in case.
"Anything that could possibly be forgotten, we bring along," Munns said.
To ensure that oft forgotten gear is brought along, the packing process begins as early as two days prior to the football team's departure date.
"We always try to be as prepared as possible," Munns said. "We check and double-check it. A lot of times, I'll go back into the equipment room after we've loaded all the buses and I'll search around to make sure we didn't forget anything, just in case."
Things change a bit if the team charters a flight to an away game, as it did for its most recent game at Cal Poly. In those instances where the team travels by plane, the equipment team uses a different approach to moving the equipment to the final location and also has to be cognizant of the weight.
"When we travel by plane, we charter the flights so what we do there is a little bit different," Munns said. "We'll actually get a U-Haul and move everything out to the airport. We drive the U-Haul right up to the airplane, and we are the ones who get underneath the airplane and load it up with some help from the charter company. We'll have people asking, 'OK, how much does this weigh? OK, that will go in this area.' Then we'll call ahead and have a U-Haul waiting for us at the destination we're going to. We jump in, unload it all, throw in on the U-Haul and take it over to the stadium."
For Munns, the most difficult part of away games isn't packing or ensuring that the equipment for nearly 60 players isn't forgotten, it's transporting and setting up the CoachComm headsets system.
"We're not as knowledgeable on [the CoachComm system] at times. So, if that breaks down, we have a tech support line. There are various things that we do for [the CoachComm}. We'll get it all set up and then we test it multiple times. We'll test it about three hours before the game starts, then we'll check them again a two hours, check them again at one hour and then usually about 30 minutes before the game we'll test them again just to make sure they're all up and running."
Whatever the task may be, the equipment team is up for the challenge. Given their efforts, the ISU football players, coaches and staff can travel with ease and are able to focus on the task at hand: to play football.
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