When you take a trip to sunny Southern California, you don’t expect to deal with a deluge of water coming out of the sky. However, that’s exactly what Utah and Ohio State have had to deal with during the first few days of their Rose Bowl prep and practices.
Stuck in an extremely unusual wet pattern for SoCal, both teams have braved the elements more than once in the week lead-up to the game on Saturday. However, on Thursday things went from bad to worse, and threatened to wash out the OSU football practice scheduled for outside at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California — about 20 minutes south of downtown L.A.
With the fields oversaturated and some of the Los Angeles area under flood advisories, according to a statement from the university, “a small army of equipment managers, trainers, strength interns, and video personnel” from Ohio State took things into their own hands. They worked late on Wednesday and most of the day Thursday to somehow broker a deal to allow the Buckeyes to practice inside the sparking and bright SoFi Stadium where the L.A. Rams and Chargers play.
change of scenery ⚡️ #GoBucks pic.twitter.com/wpfVynGnpi
— Ohio State Football (@OhioStateFB) December 31, 2021
And if you think moving practice to a new location is easy, consider that all of the following had to be packed up and moved nearly 20 minutes across town to pull off the audible.
Their task was to pack up and move the following:
- Athletic training supplies
- Coolers
- Player equipment (helmets, cleats, pads, etc.)
- Staff laundry
- Spare equipment
- Field equipment (footballs, blocking shields, tackling dummies)
- Video equipment
- Weight training equipment (according to a statement from an OSU spokesman, Thursday’s practice included strength training afterwards).
Well done, and I’ll bet the current Ohio State players didn’t mind getting an opportunity to practice in one of the newest and shiniest stadiums in all the world one bit.
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