AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. >> With a football stadium set amid the rolling, tree-lined foothills 6,621 feet above sea level in the Rampart Range of the Rocky Mountains, this is one of the nation’s largest and most scenic campuses.
But the retired B-52 bomber and armed, uniformed sentries by the north gate entrance underline very quickly that the 18,000-acre Air Force Academy isn’t just another campus stop today on the University of Hawaii football team’s schedule.
“When your bus goes through the gates there you realize what a special place it is,” said Rainbow Warriors head coach Nick Rolovich, whose team will glimpse it for the first time today.
None of the players who appeared in UH’s last visit here in 2012 are on the travel squad.
A granite Memorial Wall pays tribute to the nearly 200 graduates who have lost their lives since the Academy opened in 1959. A cemetery sits solemnly just off the road to Falcon Stadium, miniature American flags flapping in the breeze.
From its verdant football practice fields you can hear the sound of gunfire from a nearby shooting range, a pointed reminder of what the cadets are being trained for and that football is but a diversion here.
All 4,200 cadets are required to participate in one of the 27 intercollegiate teams, club sports or an intramural program. Boxing is a required activity, a spokeswoman said.
On the main terrazzo, freshmen — derisively known as “doolies” — must stay within the prescribed granite slab strips assigned to them at a run. One hand is required to be free at all times for saluting.
Up in Jacks Valley, a 5-mile hike from the main student area, is where cadets undergo demanding physical and mental challenges. Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training, including wilderness survival and confinement and interrogation in a mock prison camp, are among them.
“School is hard for these guys at the Academy and (football) practice is something they can look forward to each day,” Rolovich said. “After what they go through, it (practice) is almost like recess.”
Non-football-playing cadets march by squadrons onto Falcon Stadium before the game and then storm the stands to secure seats. There it is tradition that a cadet, following a crisp salute, may ask an officer to trade rank epaulets for the game.
After particularly notable victories some agreeable Academy superintendents (generals) have even been passed up through the stands. Others, after wins, have been known to grant weekend passes.
The precision and teamwork demanded of the cadets in so many facets of Academy life suits the triple-option offense the Falcons — who can give up 20 pounds or more per man on the lines — run.
“They run it with discipline and you’d better be disciplined, too, if you expect to stop it,” said Rolovich, whose team enters as a consensus 17-point underdog on the Las Vegas betting lines.
Teams that aren’t not only make things tough for themselves, but for the doolies. Freshmen come out of the stands to do pushups for each point scored by the Falcons. For lopsided blowouts that can mean 300 — or more — pushups in an afternoon.
“I think it is great that they (the Falcons) are in the conference,” Rolovich said. “Coming here, knowing these are people who are going to protect our country, gives you a different perspective.”
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Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
