Touch down in Sydney
8/22/2017 6:17:52 AM | General, Blog
After departing campus Sunday at 2 p.m. CDT for Australia toprepare for next weekend's season opening football game against Stanford in theSydney Cup, the Rice Owlsendured what is likely the farthest any college football team has traveled fora home game -- and it might be the farthest a team has traveled for a game,period. Between the over-three-hour flight from Houston to Los Angeles and thenthe nearly 15-hour flight from L.A. to Sydney, the Owls took comfort in the51-degree weather when they arrived in Australia's largest city Tuesdaymorning.
When the team arrived in Sydney, things started off on apositive note: They were pleasantly surprised to clear though customs in amatter of minutes, which led them to load up on four buses and head out for afull day's worth of activities ahead of schedule.
To help prepare the team to beat jet lag, the strength-and-conditioning football coaches formulated a plan for the team to followleading up to and throughout the trip. According to assistant director BretHuth, who was with the Cal Bears staff when they traveled to Sydney last yearfor the inaugural Sydney Cup, it included wearing compression pants, gettingthe team to exercise a few times throughout the flight and getting their bodies to adjust immediately to Sydney's clock.
"The most important thing to prevent further sleep debtafter the transition is to get their circadian rhythmset to Australian Eastern Standard Time as soon as possible," Huth said.
To do that, Huth said, they wanted the players to start using the clock like theywere already in Sydney. "We wanted them in the mind-set that it was Sydneytime in L.A."
That meant keeping the players up for the first half of thatflight before letting them sleep. It also included having the players dostretches and laps around the plane to keep them limber and to prevent anypossible clotting issues in the legs and ankle swelling. The team did lapsin Sydney time at 7:15 p.m. Monday and 4:30 a.m. Tuesday in the sprawling UnitedAirlines 787-9 Dreamliner. Watch a videoof Rice's Los Angeles-to-Sydney plane trip, which includes footage of the workout at38,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean.
After leaving Sydney Airport at 8:15 a.m., theteam took about a 25-minute drive in rush-hour traffic to David Phillips SportsComplex on the campus of the University of New South Wales for a 12-periodpractice. The university, which is more than 60 years old, has nearly 53,000students, and the sports complex accommodates 40 clubs and 5,000 athletes,according to its director, Craig Davis. That includes tennis, 15 field hockeyteams, 25 football (soccer) teams, five gridiron (American football) teams, eightAustralian rules teams, five baseball teans, five rugby teams and cricket. Davis is afootballer himself. He played in the Australian Rules Football league for 16years, including appearing in nine Grand Finals, "or as you Americans callit, 'Super Bowls,'" he said.
After getting the team's mind off the just-completed longjourney and their bodies stretched out and loose again, head coach David Bailiff attended an 11a.m. Australian government press conference, where the Sydney OperaHouse was used as a backdrop to welcome the Owls and Stanford Cardinal. JoiningBailiff were sophomore running back Nahshon Ellerbe and punter Jack Fox.
As the Sydney Morning Herald reported:
As the Opera House shimmered inthe background overlooking the sunshine-soaked harbour, Stanford and Riceuniversities were welcomed Down Under by a joey (young kangaroo) and a koalato begin preparations for Sunday's second Sydney Bowl. ...
They'll spend the week practicingfor their season opener, but also taking in the sights and sounds a late winterin Sydney has to offer.
"Just look at this. I think I'm changing whereI'm going to retire. I've been here five hours and already I'm thinking I'vegot to consider Sydney," Bailiff said overlooking the harbour after hisside touched down in Australia on Tuesday morning.
"You look at the backdrop of this place, driving overhere, just the architecture downtown, how it's so much old and so much new andit's all blended," he said.
While Bailiff was meeting with the media, the Owlsgot checked in at the team hotel, which is centrally located near Hyde Park,and got a much-deserved break to freshen up, get devices charged up and getonline to report back home.
In the evening the team, coaches, staff and Owl supportersshoved off for a dinner cruise in Sydney Harbour, passing by the world-famousSydney Opera House and the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge, thesixth-longest spanning-arch bridge in the world and the tallest steel archbridge, measuring 440 feet from its top to water level. It wasalso the world's widest long-span bridge, at 160 feet wide, untilconstruction of the new Port Mann Bridge in Vancouver was completed in 2012,according to Wikipedia. A quick trivia question: How many different types offish can be found in Sydney Harbour? The answer appears at the end of this post.
The team enjoyed a buffet of beef,chicken, ham, rolls, potato salad, shrimp, vegetable medley and salad, a fairlytraditional meal, but that could change tomorrow. (We'll wait for tomorrowto report more on that.)
On that note, a couple of quick hits.
The Owls will hold another practicetomorrow, tour the University of Sydney, have a meal and attend a panelfeaturing the NCAA's Oliver Luck and Rice Director of Athletics JoeKarlgaard.
Hat tip to hometown TV: KPRC and KTRK did nice,quick reports on the Owls departing Rice for Sydney. Bailiff comments in both.Watch the KPRC clip here and theKTRK clip here.
The Associated Press recapped our events today with thisstory: "Norest for jet-lagged Rice: Straight to practice Down Under."
And the answer to the trivia question: According to the AustralianBroadcasting Company, 586 different species of fish can be found in SydneyHarbour.
View more photos from the Owls' first day in Sydney by using the arrows below in the Flickr gallery.
