A Home Away From Home

Charles Nailen/The Hoya The Georgetown baseball team has had to cope with moving off campus this year, but have not seemed to mind too much.

The phrase “a home away from home,” may make you think of the Hoyas’ basketball team playing at MCI Center in downtown Washington, D.C., or on a larger scale, the New York Football Giants and their AFC counterparts the New York Jets each playing their home games at the Meadowlands in New Jersey.

Yet now, ever since Georgetown began its own version of Boston’s infamous “Big Dig” construction project, the initial association with the “home away from home” cliche may have changed. The Hoya baseball team has lost its field at the center of the Georgetown campus and has been forced to play its home games 25 minutes away at Shirley Povich Field in Cabin John Regional Park in Bethesda, Md.

The Hoyas baseball team defines what it means to compete at “a home away from home.”

Travel Team

For a young team struggling to improve and reach a consistent level of play for a college ball club, the daily van rides to and from the field could provide additional physical and mental stress on the players, irrespective of the further time constraints.

Do the players get sick of each other? Do they curse the university administration for replacing their grass and dirt with black asphalt? Do the constant trips to the field distract the players from the task at hand?

No.

In fact, it is the exact opposite.

“[Shirley Povich Field] has become an asset,” Georgetown’s second-year Head Coach Peter Wilk said. “[At the old field] you’d have lacrosse girls walking around, people would come by looking for me, the kids would walk out 10 minutes late after talking to an English professor – all this stuff going around that takes your attention off the field. [Now] there are no distractions. When we’re out there, it’s baseball.”

But on the journey out to the field, named after late sports writer Shirley Povich who worked for 75 years at The Washington Post, some players chat about school and fantasy baseball, some sleep and some yell at the coach.

“They get ticked off at me because I play country music,” Wilk said.

Yet, when they arrive in Bethesda, there are no more reporters seeking out the coaches, no more showing up to practice without the consequence of running laps and no more country music.

It’s just teammates, coaches and baseball.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

From practicing to taking care of the field, the baseball team plays several roles at Shirley Povich Field. Last year, with the team’s help, former Hoyas’ assistant coach Scott DeGeorge watered and raked the field, sustaining it as one of the best-kept grounds in the Big East.

This year, however, the players have an added role in helping assistant coaches Matt Allison and Trevor Brown maintain Shirley Povich Field. They water the lawn, rake the dirt around the bases, clean the bullpens, set the tarp on the field when it rains and lay down the chalk down prior to a game.

“We take a lot of pride in it,” senior co-captain and starting pitcher Matt Arizin said. “We take batting practice, the other team takes batting practice, we take infield, the other team takes infield and then the pitchers go out and do the lines and batters’ boxes. We do a good job.”

That team pride combined with the beauty of Shirley Povich Field has led to a much more professional atmosphere surrounding the Hoyas. The park is both a satisfying place to compete and a comfortable stadium at which to watch a game.

The grass is clean-cut. The dimensions, 330 feet down the lines and 370 to straightaway center, accommodate both power and non-power hitters. The stands are seats rather than metal bleachers like at the former Georgetown Baseball Stadium. Representatives from Hoyas’ Sports Information department sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh inning stretch when they are not announcing the players from a press box behind the backstop.

The stadium also has lights, which allowed Georgetown to complete its 16-inning 2-1 loss to Cleveland State on March 13. The game, which started at 3 p.m. before clocks were set ahead for daylight savings time, would have been suspended due to darkness had the Hoyas played on campus.

With the lights, announcers overall mood of the park, the first impression of the field is one of big time college baseball.

“Physically, it’s a great place to play,” Wilk said. “If it doesn’t create the atmosphere of wanting to play baseball, I don’t know what would.”

Community Crowds

Yet, even with the increase in comfort and mood of the new park, the Hoyas have not drawn large Georgetown crowds due to the distance to the field from campus.

“We don’t get any people out there,” said senior co-captain and starting first baseman Eric Santana. “With proper advertisement, you could. It’s a nice little yard.”

Most of the 50 to 250 people that attend Georgetown’s games are families from the Bethesda area, teams waiting their turn to play or passer-bys just watching some good baseball.

“It’s nice to see we have a little support within the community,” said freshman starting catcher Michael Lombardi.

Staying Together

Perhaps one of the most considerable benefits of the Hoyas’ playing off campus is their increased sense of team unity. They rely on each other for rides to and from Bethesda when a teammate has to take a test or talk to a professor, for keeping the field playable and for support through the ups and downs of a losing season.

“For the togetherness, that’s one of the byproducts of [traveling],” Wilk said. “We’ve had good leadership staying together through thick and thin.”

The added time spent together only strengthens that team unity, according to players.

“We all depend on one another,” Lombardi said. “Our motto is `stay together.’ We say it every day before we leave. That’s what we are all about.”

Despite the benefits of travel, sometimes its added burden takes a toll on the team.

“We spend so much time together already [on the field] and when you have to travel it takes a little more out of you,” Santana said. “[But] it could be worse. Providence got their program cancelled.”

The team does have a history of playing home games off campus. In 1990, the Hoyas were forced to travel 40 minutes into Virginia when the old field on campus was completely redone.

The same dilemma faces the Hoyas this year and will continue in the near future.

“It was an obstacle we had to conquer,” Arizin said. “We wanted to play at this level, [so] it was just something we had to do.”

Lombardi agrees.

“We’re just happy to be [on the field],” he said. “In life you always have to face adversity. You just have to adjust.”

And adjust they did.

With their sweep of UConn this weekend at Shirley Povich Field, the Hoyas have matched their 13-game win total of a last year, and they have 11 games remaining this season to surpass it.

Maybe they will do it at their “home away from home.”