Hey TOC, we have received your message. You don’t care about the other universities that appropriate the name Spartans from the ancient East Lansingians. But we do think you are interested in getting a glimpse of what game weekends are like for a member of the football team. So while we don’t have an MSU player on the TOC staff, we do have Lucas, who plays for the Case Western Reserve Spartans. And Lucas has been nice enough to compile a short diary of his schedule from the lead up to kickoff to the aftermath
of the game. We started this last week, and will be continuing it under this new article name moving forward. Let’s turn it over to Lucas…
Hey everyone, hope you enjoyed last week’s closer look into the student-athlete experience of a (D3) Spartan. If you missed last week’s article, here’s the 411: rather than give updates on various Spartan teams from across the nation, we took a deep dive into a weekend in my life as a Case Western Reserve Spartan. Going forward, we will be taking advantage of my position as both a college athlete and writer for TOC to give you all an exclusive look at what life as a Spartan student athlete looks like in 2025, albeit on a much smaller scale than for Michigan State University.
This past weekend, while the D1 MSU Spartans were kicking off at 4pm ET in Lincoln, Nebraska, the Division 3 Spartans were boarding the bus after a road win in Latrobe, Pennsylvania…
Allow me to take you through our day.
Saturday 10/4
7:00 AM- Arrive at CWRU football locker room. Pack travel bag with snacks, uniform, cleats, shoulder pads, helmet, accessories, etc. Also make sure to have a stool for somewhere to sit, and towels for postgame shower, at this level you never know what a visiting team locker room is going to look like.
7:15 AM- Load buses and depart for St. Vincent College
8:45 AM- Quick stop just outside of Youngstown, OH at Chick-Fil-A for a breakfast sandwich. As we re-boarded the bus, the stadium of MSU’s week 3 opponent, the Youngstown State Penguins, was visible as we continued southeast towards Pittsburgh.
10:30 AM- Arrive in Latrobe, PA at Chuck Noll Field. (Also home of the Pittsburgh Steelers training camp, St. Vincent is blessed with one of the nicest natural grass fields in Division 3)
11:00 AM- Final meetings and review of gameplan. Quick walk from locker room to field to get used to the natural grass field (first one I have played on since sophomore year of HS!)
11:52 AM- Specialists (Kickers, snappers, holders, returners) take the field for warm-ups.
1:00 PM- Kickoff!
About 3:40 PM- Final whistle. Spartans 42- Bearcats 14. Quick celebratory postgame speech from the coaching staff, and head back to the locker room.
3:55 PM- Grab postgame meal of catered Primanti Bros sandwiches (my first time trying the classic Pittsburgh restaurant, still not sure how I feel about french fries going ON the sandwich)
4:05 PM- Hustle to get settled on the bus, load up the Fox Sports app on my laptop, and watch a disappointing MSU loss while providing updates on TOC’s twitter (@The_OnlyColors).
7:15 PM- Arrive back at CWRU, with my notes for this week’s Film Room full of questions on Brian Lindgren’s playcall, and Special Teams woes. After a moment of worrying about the trajectory of Jonathan Smith’s program in year 2, unpack travel bag and get my locker ready for a new week of practice. Hopefully the green and white Spartans can do the same, flush the week before and focus on getting a win versus newly-dangerous UCLA.
Thanks for tuning in! For those of you counting at home, with this win, the Case Spartans are now .500, sitting at 2-2-1 after back-to-back road victories. This coming Saturday, we will take on the 2-3 Allegheny College Gators here at DiSanto Field in Cleveland for homecoming. Hoping for homecoming triumphs for both of my favorite Spartans this weekend!
