Describing a typical away trip for Stanford baseball, Trevor Haskins ’25 paints a dizzying picture.
“We leave [for games] Thursday, get there Thursday … afternoon, evening-ish. We practice Thursday and stay through Sunday, play our game Sunday, come back on Sunday,” Haskins said. “We have a 54-game schedule. We have four games a week and we’re going to be gone for half the quarter.”
Last summer, Stanford’s switch from the Pac-12 to the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) drew national attention. While news outlets weighed the pros and cons, fans and social media users offered a flurry of comments — for athletes, the switch ensured both greater opportunities and longer travel times.
Stanford athletes had played in the Pac-12, a collegiate athletic conference based in the western United States, from 1919 to 2024. Faced with the dispersal of the Pac-12 (which now has just two members), Stanford switched to the ACC, historically based on the East Coast.
“The hours are prolonged. Now, instead of having an hour and a half trip, it’s a five hour flight plus layovers. Everything is kind of extended out, which means we’ll be missing more class time,” Haskins said.
Caelan Koch B.S. ’24 M.A ’25, an outfielder on the softball team, echoed Haskins’s remarks. “Our in-conference travel trips are now a bit further away, so we may have to miss an extra day of school and spend more time on the plane,” she said.
However, the student-athlete experience is far from monolithic. From unique schedules to diverse academic experiences, no two athletes or teams are the same. For Stanford’s field hockey team, the switch to the ACC means less travel than in previous seasons.
“We weren’t actually in the PAC-12 to begin with. We competed in a different conference called the American East. It’s funny because since joining the ACC, we have actually traveled on fewer occasions,” Daisy Ford ’26, a field hockey player and writer for The Daily, said.
As an affiliate member of the American East Conference, the team had to travel to the East Coast for matches. As a full member of the ACC, other teams now travel to Stanford for conference games.
“We had about three to four road trips [this season], which was less than previous years, so it’s actually been manageable,” Ford said.
Balancing athletics, academics and mental health is no easy task. With longer travel times, many student-athletes are missing more classes. While Ford recounted taking midterms on the road, Haskins emphasized the importance of recorded lectures and flexible professors, noting that absence policies vary widely between instructors and departments.
“I have three classes this quarter, and three group projects in those classes. I feel bad for my group because [sometimes] I’m boarding a flight and that’s [a] time that they can all make,” Haskins said.
Ford, however, finds it “quite manageable” to balance both academics and athletics. “When you’re away, you just have to email your professors and they report back to you,” Ford says. As a Spanish major, she finds that smaller classes allow her to build closer relationships with professors.
Coaches, sports psychologists and academic counselors, who play a vital role in supporting players on and off the field have had to adapt to the changes as well.
“Our coaches help keep us accountable for our school work on the long trips and, in general, support us as people, students and athletes, so that helps a lot with travel trips and things like that,” Koch said.
“Since we moved to the ACC, the athletic administration has tried really, really hard to make it easier for us because more sports are traveling. They’ve been a lot better [at] helping us communicate with professors,” added Ford.
Though travel looks different this season, student-athletes are excited to take on the challenge.
“We just played our first ACC series on the road and we all felt pretty comfortable and like it was just another long road trip like we’ve taken before for Super Regionals and pre-season tournaments,” Koch said.
As members of the ACC, Stanford athletes have the chance to compete with some of the best teams in the nation. Ford, who describes having now played against many of the “Final Four” of field hockey, sees it as an “amazing chance to take our program to the next level.”
“Stanford approaches it from a perspective of ‘oh yeah, let’s bring it,’” Ford said.