On October 4, the football, men’s and women’s soccer, and field hockey teams made the 294-mile trek up to Colby College. The football team then returned to Maine last Saturday to take on Bates, a trip that the other three squads will take in a week. Trips such as these are too long to do in one day. Instead, the teams depart the day before the game and stay overnight—an increasingly expensive action. According to Athletic Business Manager Tom Wantuck, the cost of hotel rooms has increased substantially this year due to rising utility costs.

“All of the [hotels’] rates are up this year because of utility costs,” Wantuck explained. “In Maine, up in Waterville, we paid $50 [per room] last year; now they’re $65, which is still…a great rate, but it is Waterville, Maine, and that’s quite an increase. [Hotels’] energy costs seem to be driving the costs of everything we do.”

The ramifications of these higher hotel costs are already being felt. For example, a number of players were placed in triples when the football team traveled to Bates over the weekend. The team stayed at the same hotel (a Holiday Inn in Bath, Maine) as they did for their trip to Bowdoin in 2007 and Colby in 2006; on these trips, all of the players were in doubles. In addition, the hotel had to place cots in the triple rooms to accommodate additional players. Wantuck noted that hotels typically charge an additional $10 per room for this service, though it varies by hotel.

These issues further complicate the multitude of variables in planning accommodations for the Athletic Department, where the number of overnight trips varies significantly from season to season and team to team. In 2007, for example, the men’s lacrosse team had three regular-season overnight trips: Middlebury, Bowdoin and Colby. In 2008, however, the team had just one: its regular-season finale at Bates. Wantuck explained that he adjusts each team’s budget every season based on how many overnight trips it will take.

“What I do each year is revise each team’s budget based on how many trips they are [taking],” he explained. “I specifically budget each trip. I have an idea about what hotels cost and [am] pretty close on what the buses cost. I get a list for each trip, see all the costs we have, and build the budget that way. So each year, as the schedule rotates, I’ll change each team’s budget.”

Postseason play, however, can have a substantial effect on a team’s budget. In some sports, all 11 NESCAC teams qualify for championships, including the cross country, squash, swimming and diving, and track and field Championships, in addition to the NESCAC Golf Championship Qualifier. The locations of these Championships, which are on a school-by-school rotation, are set well in advance, allowing the department to adjust its team budgets accordingly. However, the other Championships use a by-qualification-only format that often makes it impossible to determine the opponent and location for a team’s first-round contest until the final day of the regular season. For example, the men’s ice hockey team entered the final weekend of the 2007-08 season with a chance of finishing anywhere from fifth to eighth place, which meant four possible first-round destinations: Amherst, Bowdoin, Colby or Middlebury. The Cardinals did not know they would travel to Colby until the very end of the regular season. Wantuck noted that the uncertainty regarding which teams will qualify for NESCAC Championships, and, in turn, where they will play, makes setting team budgets extremely difficult. In particular, the decision to increase the fields for six of the NESCAC Championships — field hockey, soccer, women’s ice hockey, and lacrosse — from seven teams to eight has further complicated matters.

“Budgeting is difficult because you don’t know how many teams you’re going to get in,” Wantuck said. “So we have a set amount that we have set aside for postseason play and we just hope it’s enough.”

In cases where teams have multiple first-round destinations that would necessitate an overnight trip, Wantuck makes hotel reservations in each city the Cardinals may visit. However, he noted that Wesleyan is typically not charged for cancelling these reservations.

“Most hotels know how athletic teams work,” he explained. “Usually, they’ll fill up [anyway]. If we’ve got a chance to go to Middlebury, and we don’t go there, there’s another team probably going there, so it’ll work out for them overall.”

Wantuck also noted that when teams qualify for multiple-day NESCAC Championships, the team stays overnight at the host site instead of returning home in between contests, unless the host school is in-state. For example, when the men’s lacrosse team advanced to the title game of the 2007 NESCAC Championship, the team stayed at Tufts following the semifinal game instead of returning home and going back the day of the final.

In a way, the Athletic Department is hurt monetarily by the success of its teams. A total of 52 Wesleyan teams have qualified for NESCAC Championships; 23 of these teams had a first-round or semifinal contest at a school that requires overnight travel. In addition, teams are allowed to travel overnight to NESCAC Championship contests if they would otherwise have to leave campus before 8:00 a.m. to arrive at the competition site 90 minutes prior to game time. As some NESCAC Championship contests start as early as 9:00 a.m., this frequently turns regular-season day trips such as Tufts and Williams into overnight affairs.

The rising hotel rates, however, are unlikely to put Wesleyan at a competitive disadvantage relative to its wealthier peers. The NESCAC allows overnight trips during the regular season only when a team would otherwise have to leave before 7:30 a.m. the day of a game to arrive at the competition site 90 minutes before game time. Wesleyan, for example, is permitted to travel overnight only to Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Hamilton and Middlebury.

Although the rising costs of transportation and lodging are straining the department budget, Wantuck noted that it is not going to attempt to cut costs in this area if that would hurt Wesleyan’s ability to be competitive in the conference. For example, he noted that the department is not going to place more than three players in a room to limit the number of rooms that must be booked. Rather, these increasing costs have had a trickle-down effect on the department, as other budgets have been frozen.

“What we’ve done [is] flattened out equipment budgets for the teams,” Wantuck said. “They haven’t been getting any increase or decrease…That’s one of the things that gets deferred: capital requests by the coaches, major uniform purchases, equipment. We’ve done away with [budget increases], basically… we’re going to need some more University assistance. I’m not sure what else we can do as a department and maintain competitive [equality] in the conference.”