After 22 Years, Rams Return to Irvine for Training Camp

After 22 Years, Rams Return to Irvine for Training Camp
By Myles Simmons

[www.therams.com]

It’s not the first time the Rams organization has descended on the University of California, Irvine. It’s been a while — over two decades — but there are members of the organization who have been around long enough to remember when the Los Angeles Rams last held training camp here.

“UCI was one of my first summers working in this same locker room,” head equipment manager Jim Lake said. “The field looks the same. It’s the same fields we practiced on, the same footprint.”

Lake was a young equipment intern back then in 1994 when the Rams last held camp at UC Irvine. The franchise also used the venue from 1990 to 1992.

And, apparently, Lake make an impression even then.

“One of the guys in the training room was at Bed, Bath, and Beyond yesterday buying some fans and somebody asked, ‘Is Jim Lake still with the team?’” Lake said. “I have no idea who it was. But it’s kind of crazy. … Somebody remembered me. Hopefully for a good reason.”

Whatever the cause, the Rams are now ready to make more memories in Southern California, as training camp begins at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday afternoon. It’s been a complex logistical process since January to set everything up for players, coaches, staff, and fans. But the Rams are ready for what should be a lively and productive time on UC Irvine’s campus.

“I think as you walk around and you see the facilities and the setup for the fans and for our players, it’s going to be a really good situation for us,” Rams director of operations Bruce Warwick said.


Los Angeles has two fields surrounded by bleachers set up at UC Irvine’s Crawford Field — a setting normally used for soccer. In order to create a first-class setup, the Rams made a host of improvements to the space they’ll be occupying through the end of the preseason. The club re-sodded the field, and gutted two locker rooms to create a new training room and locker room for their 90 players.

“We redesigned the locker room — put brand new lockers in, new light fixtures, new paint everywhere,” Lake said. “ It’s pretty nice for an NFL training camp, to be honest with you. It’s pretty top notch. We’re moving into a fresh building — older building but fresh insides — ready to go.

“It’s kind of nice to have brand news digs to move into,” Lake added.

“I think the most important thing is that we got the football part of it right,” Warwick said. “We got the locker room right, we got the fields right, we got the meeting space right — that’s what’s most important to get our team prepared to play a football game.”

There are some unique challenges that come with putting together a temporary spot for training camp. As head athletic trainer Reggie Scott put it, even though their room will only be used for a short amount of time, it can’t have limited resources.

“Our goal is always to make sure when players come to this facility, they feel like it’s the best facility in the country for them,” Scott said. “We kind of have it set up like we always do to make the players feel at home — our hydro area, our treatment area, our rehabilitation area, our taping and bracing area, and storage.”

“We want to optimize our guys’ health, optimize their performance. And you can’t do that in a halfway manner,” Scott continued. “You don’t want to not have something there for a player to get better. So our goal is to try to provide everything like we would do at home.”

The same objective applies to the weight room, where assistant strength coach J Aggabao has been hard at work getting the details right. He said moving into UCI was a smooth process in large part because of what was already set up at the facility.

“We didn’t have to change a whole lot. We left all of their stuff, really, in place,” Aggabao said. “We brought two power racks in that we like to use just to add a few more work stations. We brought in heavier dumbbells. Our guys work with a little bit higher rate than the collegiate athletes do, so we had to bring in a wider variety of dumbbells. And some cardio equipment that’s specialized for our guys.”

With 8,500 square feet in the weight room, there’s plenty of space for the Rams to bring in the entire offensive or defensive unit for a lift.


“The great advantage is we have two big garage doors that we can roll up when the days are nice, and walk in and out of the weight room and do some of our workouts that way,” Aggabao said. “The other thing, too, is it’s right next to the field. So easy access for our guys pre practice if they want to do a little activation and be able to go on the field right afterwards.”

There are a number of benefits to the Southern California climate — the ability to have the indoor-outdoor space being one of them. Another is that the players will deal with a lot less humidity than they have in the past, which affects bodies on the field during practice.

“Surprisingly, it gets very warm, though,” Scott said. “Now with humidity, you can’t evaporate sweat. It’s harder to cool down, so you’re a little more high risk of heat illness. Here, they will be able to evaporate their sweat, they will be able to cool down with the breeze.

“But I don’t want them to take that positive and think that they still shouldn’t hydrate, eat properly, take care of their bodies,” Scott continued. “So you’ve got to kind of balance that act a little bit and understand that.”

As the players have checked in this week, it’s easy for members of the organization to get fired up not just for camp, but also for the upcoming season as a whole. That’s especially because of the many passionate fans expected to line the stands at UC Irvine over the next few weeks.

“I think last year when we went down to Oxnard and practiced with the Cowboys, our players fed off the energy of the fans,” Warwick said. “I think we’re going to see that times two, especially that first weekend here.”

“I think it’s going to be crazy,” Lake said. “All the stands out there, Saturday — that first practice with the fans — they’re going to be yelling and screaming.

“I think [it’ll be a] ‘the hair’s going to stand up on the back of your neck’ situation,” Lake continued. “I think that’s definitely going to happen to not just the players, but all of us. Every one of us who has been grinding away for three, four months on the move. And I think it’s going to be exciting for everybody.”