Life on the Road for a Big Sky MVP
Early-morning flights to North Dakota. Making the most out of Pocatello, Idaho. A star student-athlete shares the ups and downs of traveling with the team.
Kennedy Kurtz recently completed her fourth and final season by capturing the Big Sky Conference volleyball MVP in November after leading Sacramento State to its regular season conference championship since 2007. To cap off her career, the senior from Tucson, Arizona, finished with the most assists in the nation in 2017.
Kurtz spent four years competing in the Big Sky Conference and in her time, she played 69 of her career 132 games outside of California. She said when she first arrived on campus, she was excited to travel, that was before she played in a total of 25 games in either Idaho, Utah, Washington or Arizona during her career. Kurtz stepped away from the game for a moment as she sits down to talk about what air travel, studying and weather is like for student-athletes on the road.
When you play in places like Montana or North Dakota, what does the travel process consist of?
It’s brutal. You basically take three flights. We usually fly from here to Seattle, then from Seattle, if we’re lucky, we’ll fly straight into Missoula. When we fly to North Dakota, we would fly here to Seattle, Washington to Minneapolis, Minnesota to Grand Forks, North Dakota. We will usually get up at like 5 to 6 in the morning to travel.
“I did not want to go to Pocatello, Idaho, and I was not looking forward to going to Southern Utah. That is literally in the middle of nowhere.”
When you travel to places that require three flights, is the third leg of the flight ever in a small plane?
Yes, always. Whenever we fly to the Montanas or North Dakota, it’s always a small plane. Two seats and a propeller every single time.
Is that ever scary?
We joke about it as a team that it’s a scary flight but we’ve never had any issues. We’ve never had a canceled flight, which I’m shocked because the weather, especially going to those places in November, you could easily get a canceled flight because of weather conditions or snow or rain.
After doing the Big Sky travel for four years, by the fourth year were you tired of going to some places?
I was over it. I did not want to go to Pocatello, Idaho, and I was not looking forward to going to Southern Utah. That is literally in the middle of nowhere. Big Sky travel is probably one of the hardest traveling. I was over it in my junior year.
I know you didn’t play them this year, but would you have felt that same way if you were playing at North Dakota?
No, I think that would have been a little motivating for us to go there this year, if we would have gone there. There was a kind of a rivalry between us. If anything we would have been pumped to go there. We beat them there my sophomore year and then we lost to them my junior year by two points. I think if we went there we would have been sick of it but it’s also, ‘No, we want to go there and we want to beat you on your home floor.’
What’s the coldest or iciest conditions that you’ve been in?
North Dakota, our Big Sky Championship last year. It was below freezing and partly snowing when we went. It was miserable.
When you go to the airport, is there a lot of waiting, sitting around involved?
Yeah, we always get to the airport super early. Normally you would get to the airport an hour before your flight. We get there two hours before just in case anything goes wrong. We travel basically 16 girls on top of three coaches and our athletic trainer. It’s basically 20 plus people going on our trips.
How fun is traveling as a team?
It’s awesome. Volleyball is a little different from other sports. We are on the road from Wednesday to Sunday. You are with your players and coaches for four to five days. Traveling as a team you just get to know your teammates so much better and you develop bonds with your teammates that you may not have necessarily developed if you guys didn’t travel.
Do you have to bring volleyballs with you?
No. We played a joke on our freshman this year saying that we had to bring volleyballs and they believed it. So it was really funny, but no, we don’t bring any of that stuff.
What’s something that the average person may not know about athletes’ traveling?
How much little downtime you have. I don’t think people understand that when we are traveling it’s not like we are having this grand old time and there is so much time to do whatever we want. We have film, we have pre-practices, there is not a lot of time to do fun stuff.
How much do you study on the road?
Right now some people have study hours based on grades. I normally spend about two to three hours depending on what I have that week. For some people, they have to get in five study hours a week. We will have a room set up for people. Our coach really understands that we’re adults and we should know when to study on our own. He respects us to not always have to go to a study room to get homework done.
What’s your favorite city that you’ve been to?
We went to New York City this past year and that was easily my favorite. We got to play St. John’s there. We stayed in downtown Brooklyn and that was really cool in an amazing hotel. I think that was for sure my favorite place to go.
