Ivy League coaches know well the roads between Philly and Ithaca, New York. Since the inception of the league 60 years ago, their travels to the various Ivy towns have left them with no shortage of opinions. Here’s a sampling of the likes and dislikes of traveling to play the Big Green, as told by coaches from Dartmouth’s Ivy competitors.

Keith Miller
Harvard, Diving
Best: One of my favorite things about coming up to Dartmouth is seeing Ron Keenhold, your retired swimming and diving coach. Ron welcomed me to the league immediately. He even took me for a wonderful fishing weekend to the Second College Grant, where I caught some trout, my first salmon, and saw two moose. Current diving coach Chris Hamilton is also a very close friend. I’ve had Dartmouth divers come to train with me during the summer and some of my former club divers have gone on to dive at Dartmouth. It’s a close-knit sport and those relationships carry on through college and beyond. Finally, the schedule in recent years is nice: With our men and women competing on the same weekend, I can stay the night and go to Jesse’s.

Worst: Probably the limited facility, especially when we have three teams competing at the same time. It’s difficult for everyone to prepare for the competition with only two diving boards—most schools in the league have four.

Brian Tompkins
Yale, Men’s Soccer
Best: The bus ride to Hanover. We typically play in early- to mid-October, and as we travel north on I-91 there is no better time to see rural New England in all its splendor. Hanover is one of the most scenic and beautiful college towns in the country. It would be nice to experience it in the summer sometime. I’m a big city guy and I wouldn’t necessarily want to live there, but I do like to visit.

Lui Lui restaurant in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, is the best road trip restaurant there is. The place is usually packed, but they always manage to accommodate our team, and they serve the best family-style Italian food. Their pasta is amazing.

Worst: My least favorite part about playing at Dartmouth is that we are rarely victorious. We’ve played many close games there through the years, but it’s proven to be an incredibly difficult place for us to win—and that makes for a very long bus ride home. Maybe 2014 will be the year we change that.

Courtney Banghart ’00
Princeton, Women’s Basketball
Best: Leede Arena. Having spent eight years there as a player and assistant coach, I have very special memories. I’ve always been so warmly welcomed by the great fan base up there—former professors, custodians, office personnel, other coaches and members of the Upper Valley community. It will always be a homecoming for me.

We eat at Jesse’s the night before a game—who doesn’t love a good steak and elaborate salad bar before battle? And we eat our pregame meal at Molly’s. The bread is delicious—although as a retired athlete I now have to exercise portion control.

Worst: Does it always have to be so cold? My players, many who are from warmer climates, prepare for the tundra on the annual trip to Dartmouth, complete with jackets, boots, hats and gloves. For first-year students it can be the first time they’ve ever worn such items. My blood has thinned in my old age, so I too bundle up.

Lars Tiffany
Brown, Men’s Lacrosse
Best: I see many of my family members up there. My mother works at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and my brother and his family live close by in Sunapee. I actually planted the New Hampshire seed for our family, having coached at Dartmouth in 1999 and 2000 with Rick Sowell.

Worst: Facing both a tenacious opponent and raucous fans, sometimes clad in full-body costumes. It can be a little distracting as our men try to focus on the next play when a 6-foot Teletubby and his ape friend are reminding them of ex-girlfriends who’ve dumped them.

Julie Platt Farlow
Cornell, Softball
Best: Sightseeing in West Lebanon. We once saw a moose.

Worst: Watching the home team enjoy its heated dugout.

Rudy Fuller
Penn, Men’s Soccer
Best: It’s a great environment to play college soccer—our guys really enjoy it. When they renovated Burnham Field they did a fantastic job. Historically Dartmouth has always had a very strong team in the league, and the fans turn out. As for other places in town, my personal favorite is Dirt Cowboy—they have great coffee.

Worst: It’s very beautiful driving up to New England during that time of the year, but when you’re talking about the southern-most Ivy playing the northern-most Ivy, the drive is probably the biggest challenge. It’s the longest drive we make in a season. It’s one of those games that you always want to win, because the ride home after a loss is excruciatingly long. If you get caught in traffic on I-95, it can be an eight- or nine-hour ride.

Willy Wood
Columbia, Cross Country/Track and Field
Best: The best part of competing in Hanover is time travel. We board our bus in Manhattan and seemingly drive straight back in time to the 1950s as buildings and people slowly disappear in some cool, grand Thoreau-ish-type way.

Worst: The weather. Almost without fail we are greeted with flake after flake of snow until miles and miles of highway are covered in white. It’s as if we drove right into the middle of a snow globe that is being vigorously shaken, always making for an interesting and long trip home full of a choir of, “Oh my God, how could anyone live up here?”