What It Takes: The Terps Head West

The Maryland Terrapins are preparing to travel to the West Coast for a Big Ten Conference clash with the UCLA Bruins for their first-ever game inside The Rose Bowl. 

The Terps will travel more than 2,630 miles from College Park to California, prompting a unique question: what goes into making sure their game day feels as normal as possible on the other side of the country?

It’s a combination of many things — some expected, some not. The team will be practicing on the road, something it doesn’t typically do. The Terps are providing an overflow of academic support, something that’s not typically offered for a quick trip. But just about everything else is business as usual.

“Routine is everything,” Director of Football Operations Annie Peppard said. “We’ve gone through every single detail multiple times, just making sure we have all bases covered.”

Maryland is heading to the West Coast on Thursday, a day earlier than the program typically travels. The Terps will get a practice at a local community college to adjust to the three-hour time change and the different climate.

“Half this trip’s planning was around practicing out there,” Peppard said. “We went through a number of schools, a very long laundry list of schools that we spoke to and looked at to practice at.”

Glendale Community College checked the boxes and will host a Thursday practice for the Terps after their 5 AM flight from Maryland. 

On the long, early-morning flight, players will be given blankets, eye masks, and earplugs. They’ll be checked on at different points and reminded to hydrate and eat before falling back asleep. Once they land in Los Angeles, Thursday will be treated like a typical practice day as the Terps acclimate to the California elements at GCC. 

“I think it's very unique that we're practicing out there,” Peppard said. She mentioned that for a typical week, the team will practice at home on Thursday before flying out and then participate in a walk-through on Friday.

A season ago, Maryland played its first-ever game at the Oregon Ducks, marking its first trip west of Nebraska since competing in the Foster Farms Bowl in Santa Clara, California, in 2014.

The Terps packed up shop and moved it to Eugene, Oregon, for a November clash with the Ducks in 2024, setting a precedent for what West Coast travel looks like for a Maryland-based team. 

“I learned that we have a really strong support staff here, and everyone played a major part in making it a success,” Peppard said. “We played really hard in that game. In the first half of that game, our team looked like the best team that we had seen all year. So there was something to it, in terms of that we did everything right to prepare them for that game.”

As for this week’s contest, it’ll be just the third time ever that the Terps and the Bruins meet on a football field. The last time Maryland played UCLA on the road was in 1954 at what’s now known as the Los Angeles Coliseum (the current home of the USC Trojans).

The last time the Terps played the Bruins in Los Angeles, a gallon of gas cost 29 cents, Dwight D. Eisenhower was at the beginning of his first presidential term, the New York Giants won the World Series (just four years prior to them moving to San Francisco in 1958), and the first polio vaccine had just been created. 

On that trip over 75 years ago, the Terps weren't able to experience nearly as many comforts or luxuries as this year’s team will throughout its travel, although they did tour a collection of movie studios before returning to College Park.

Preparation for this year’s trip started over two years ago, when the Big Ten’s five-year opponent schedule was released following Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington joining the conference. Peppard took a trip out west to look at potential hotels, practice fields and other venues. 

The Terps’ equipment truck left College Park on Monday morning and is expected to arrive in Pasadena on Wednesday, loaded with essentials to make things feel as “normal” as possible. 

This trip is far from just happening on a whim. Every single detail, down to the layout of the food buffets in the team meals at the hotels are planned out and coordinated ahead of time. 

“Our Friday night menu is always the same,” Peppard said. “Friday night snack menu is pretty much always the same. The only thing that changes is like the pre-game meal based on what time we're kicking off.”

The Terps are playing away from SECU Stadium for just the second time in 2025. After his team took down the Wisconsin Badgers on the road to improve to 4-0, head coach Michael Locksley made sure to shout out Peppard and her efforts. 

“This was the first time 64 new guys went on the road with our program,” Locksley said. “Tremendous collaboration. Our operations staff did an incredible job of getting us here on time and going through our protocol to make it as routine as possible. They allowed us to have the comfort of knowing where we are and what we’re doing.”

An impressive support staff will accompany the Terps again this week and be available to them throughout the trip. A non-denominational pastor will accompany the team on the trip, along with a team of nutrition and health experts.

This year, Maryland has even carved out intentional time on Friday dedicated to providing the team with time to catch up on its academics and assignments.

Come Saturday, the day will look like any other game day, including the ones played at home. The Terps spend the night in a hotel before the games and have specific routines for preparing to play. 

“We even practice that before the season, during pre-season camp,” Peppard said. “We do a dry run of what it is for a typical home hotel stay.” That way, when they’re on the road, waking up at a hotel, and the next steps of getting ready to play are familiar. 

The players won’t have to worry about anything. The layout of the rooms is set. Instructions for how to prepare the hotel key cards have been provided to hotels. Transportation has been covered for months. All the Terps will need to focus on is the opponent, one they don’t have much experience against in the new-look Big Ten. 

The times are changing. The Terps are traveling. But even thousands of miles from College Park, it’ll feel like any other game thanks to the efforts of Maryland’s support staff.