Ely an ideal second home for UNLV football

By Ryan Greene

Thursday, Aug. 14, 2008 | 10:24 p.m.

ELY- Sunday afternoon, Ely resident Scott Gregerson was on his way home with his youngest son, Anthony, when he spotted more activity than usual at the city park.

The park's main function is serving as the home for White Pine High's football and baseball teams a few months out of the year.

Gregerson and his son stopped and stuck around for a couple of hours, watching UNLV's football team take over the city park for the first portion of a 10-day training camp. He said the Rebels' presence in the sleepy mountain town is not publicized.

And both sides appear happy. For 10 days, the Rebels do their thing, not getting in anyone's way, and the town goes about its business the way it normally does. Ely gets a moderate economic boost from the UNLV players and staff filling its motel rooms, while the Rebels hope to benefit in a few ways of their own.

For one, they get used to playing at altitude (Ely's 6,350-foot elevation is roughly 5,000 feet higher than Rebel Park on the UNLV campus). The team also gets used to playing on natural grass, and beats the Las Vegas heat, even if it's just for a short stretch.

Typical afternoon temperatures in Ely range from the low 70s to the upper 80s.

But, of course, the seclusion from everything that is Las Vegas is nice, too.

"Las Vegas being the great city it is, there's a lot of things to get into, not to say that people do while we're in camp," said senior running back Frank Summers. "Here, you're only one of four places. Here, it's focus."

Those four places are either the park, White Pine High (which the Rebels use for morning meals, tape jobs and meetings), the motel (UNLV spreads out through a few of them) or the Postal Palace (the town's old post office, which serves as a mess hall for lunches and dinners).

Via truck, the Rebels bring up all of their practice equipment, everything from tackling dummies to goalposts. They dress in an armory located behind the park, and use a mobile shower house which looks like a trailer home after practice.

No frills, to say the least.

"It's very humbling," said sophomore quarterback Omar Clayton. "Coach likes to call us a blue-collar team, and that's what we are. Anytime that all you have to worry about is football, life is good."

Of course, the few distractions that there are in Ely. The downtown drag is peppered with a few casinos and bars, and a pair of brothels - yes, brothels - cozy up to the mountainside just across the street from the practice field. But the coaching staff, three years into the Ely tradition, has the scheduling aspect of the trip down to a science at this point, leaving little-to-no time to even consider seeing what Ely has to offer.

The players take school buses from their motels to White Pine High at 7:30 a.m., where they line up in the hallway which serves as a mini-training room, managers taping ankles and all. Schedules are posted on the walls of the school's main entrance, where heavy-eyed athletes toting iPods check what their days will look like before heading into the school's cafeteria for breakfast.

The buses are loaded back up at about 9:00 a.m. and creep through some neighborhoods to the park. The day won't end until roughly 10:30 p.m., when the term 'Lights out' is a welcoming sound.

"There's some guys that they need to not have distractions, and some guys can concentrate no matter what," coach Mike Sanford said.

Added d-lineman Malo Taumua: "Training camp is all about football. There's no outside distractions. Frank talked to us last night, and he said the one thing he loves is it's all football, and I started thinking, because I think everyone feels like that."

But how long does the UNLV-Ely relationship last?

The roots are there for UNLV football - quite literally.

Michael 'Chub' Drakulich, considered the father of UNLV athletics, is a graduate of White Pine High. Also a White Pine alum is the program's first football coach - Bill Ireland. In fact, his picture still hangs in the hall with the rest of the 1945 senior class. Behind the school right now, a new football stadium is under construction, and is expected to be completed for next year, though it's not known if UNLV will be using it just yet.

At the same time, there's a very real cost for bringing an entire football program into the mountains for nearly two weeks. And, obviously, the best way to justify that would be to see more wins in 2008 than the two which have come in each of the past four seasons.

That's the goal they've been building towards this week. It's accomplishment is what is yet to be seen.

"I think we could do (training camp) in (Vegas), there's no question we could do it there," Sanford said. "It's been done before. If you're asking me what's better, I'd say it's better to get away, without question."