How Purdue women's basketball prepared for first trip to Pacific Northwest: "It’s a lot of behind the scenes"

The Boilermakers, who are 0-5 in Big Ten play, face Oregon on Wednesday and Washington on Saturday

Months of preparation were poured into this week’s trip to Oregon and Washington as the Purdue women’s basketball team travels to the Pacific Northwest for the first time in the new Big Ten.

And then Monday happened.

Welcome to circumstances out of your control, Amie Anthrop, the director of operations for Katie Gearlds’ program. Anthrop is a veteran in the operations world and can adjust quickly.

Anthrop was armed with her 1 ½ inch binder full of “every single document that I could need for the trip. I carry it with me at all times.”

Where’s the document about plane issues and delays? That happened to the Boilermakers, who were scheduled to leave for Eugene, Oregon, late Monday afternoon but remained on the ground until the charter flight was canceled around 9 p.m.

After a new plane arrived Tuesday morning, the team finally departed around 12:45 p.m. to begin the roundtrip journey to Eugene and Seattle. They’ll return to West Lafayette after midnight on Saturday.

The men’s basketball team left Tuesday — the original departure day — around noon and headed to Seattle for Wednesday’s game against Washington before moving to Eugene for Saturday’s matchup.

When the Boilermakers play in a Thanksgiving week tournament, they stay in one hotel, and the local organizers handle the transportation. But this trip requires multiple hotels, arranging buses to move the travel party around Eugene and Seattle, planning meals and other activities, and syncing up charter flights to each location.

Anthrop and Elliott Bloom, the director of basketball administration and operations for the men’s program, discussed putting both teams on the same plane for the trip.

“We talked about the possibility of sharing the planes out there, but there were too many logistical issues that could have come up,” Anthrop said. “They needed to get back immediately because they play Tuesday (Jan. 21 vs. Ohio State), where we have a little bit more flexibility.”

The teams will use the same plane on Thursday. The men’s team will travel to Eugene from Seattle on Thursday morning, and the plane will remain in Oregon while the women’s team conducts a walkthrough at the Ducks’ facility. The plane will then fly the women’s team back to Seattle to prepare for Saturday’s game against Washington.

Amie Anthrop (center) is the program’s director of operations (Mark Elsner Photography)

Other items of interest about the trip:

• Anthrop compared the preparation to a 10-day spring break trip she organized for the Purdue softball team when she was the program’s supervisor of operations before switching to basketball.

“That was a couple of years ago, but it was helpful regarding multiple hotels and driving from place to place,” said Anthrop, who served as the head coach at three different high school basketball programs in the Greater Lafayette Area before moving to Purdue.

Anthrop spent Christmas break sending rooming lists and meal requests and confirming flights with the charter company.

“I worked over Christmas break to try to get (the hotels) everything that they needed with our rooming lists and with all of our food that we'll have. It’s a lot of behind the scenes,” she said.

• The Boilermakers had only two non-conference road trips (Fort Myers, Fla., and Miami, Ohio), and Anthrop could focus on this week’s excursion to Oregon and Washington.

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“You've got to coordinate the plane, you’ve got to make sure the busses are there to pick us up,” she said. “We’ve got to make sure the hotel has our keys, so it's as easy and seamless a process as possible. We are very much creatures of habit, and I know we need to eat for a two o’clock game at 10:15 a.m. Just a lot of tiny details, and when you're doing it for almost a week, it's a lot of things.”

• How will the players adapt to the three-hour time difference? That was why the Boilermakers were scheduled to leave Monday, hoping to adjust to West Coast time. It didn’t work out.

Purdue will play at 9 p.m. (ET) on Wednesday — its latest game of the season — but it tips off against Washington at 5 p.m. (ET).

“Our latest game this year has been seven o’clock,” Anthrop said. “When we go to Illinois, it's 8:30, but Wednesday is 9 p.m. on our bodies. That's why we thought it would be best for us to go one day before.

“Thankfully, when we play Washington, it's a two o'clock game (West Coast time), and it’s five o'clock here. It won’t technically be a red-eye flight back. We'll get back here late, but it won’t be as hard on our bodies as playing a late evening game and then flying back.”

The first game after the trip is Wednesday, Jan. 22, against No. 4 USC at Mackey Arena.

Katie Gearlds (Chad Krockover Photography)

• Is there any free time?

The team planned to visit an Escape Room adventure in Eugene, but it was canceled after the travel delay. They’re scheduled to visit Pike Place Market in Seattle and practice at the WNBA’s Seattle Storm’s Center for Basketball Performance, a $64 million facility that opened last spring.

Gearlds was a first-round draft by Seattle in 2007 and played three seasons. Maybe Gearlds’ picture is hanging on a wall somewhere in the facility.

“It's funny because the Storm had to contact the other WNBA teams to say we were practicing in their facility, so they didn't have any competitive advantage,” Gearlds said. “I didn’t know they had to do that. I haven't seen the new facility, and I’m sure it’s cool.

“Obviously, the job is to go and try to win basketball games, but at the same time, you don’t want to be sitting in the hotel room all the time. It's no fun.”

• More equipment is needed for the weeklong trip. Each bag and luggage must be weighed before being placed on the plane.

“Our athletic trainer is taking a whole other bag just because she needs extra tape while we're out there,” Anthrop said. “She needs extra pre-game snacks. Our equipment manager is traveling with us. She has to coordinate laundry with Oregon and Washington because we'll wear the same black uniforms both times.”

• The Boilermakers usually take smaller planes on their trips, but they’ll travel on an Embraer ERJ-190, which seats 100 passengers, including 12 members from the John Purdue Club.

“This is one of our first trips this year where we are taking a larger plane, and it gives us a little bit more space to move and not be as cramped,” Anthrop said.

• Near the end of the conversation, Anthrop recalled one last item to include on the itinerary.

“The amount of school that we're missing and (this) week is the first week of classes,” Anthrop said. “They'll go Monday and be out the rest of the week. That's another thing, too.

“We've got to make sure academic advisors are getting their travel letters out to them, and then our players need to get their travel letters out to make sure it's all excused. And now that I'm saying that, I probably need to build some study hall time into our itinerary.”

• Next season when the Boilermakers travel to UCLA and USC, the trip won’t be as complex. Purdue will fly into Los Angeles and move from one campus to the other on a bus, although there’s no enjoyment in dealing with traffic in Southern California.

But the final word comes from Anthrop, who sympathizes with the Big Ten’s newest members and the travel challenges they face.

“Here we are speaking, and we have to make this trip one time,” she said. “I can't imagine UCLA, USC, Oregon, and Washington because they’ll make it a lot more.”