This feature appeared in the Arizona Daily Sun on Nov. 5, 2005.

These Magpies migrate half a world away

By Ed Odeven

You think six weeks in sunny Florida or Arizona shagging fly balls, running the bases, taking extra infield practice and working on the hit-and-run is an exhausting way to spend the baseball preseason?

Try spending two weeks with the Collingwood Magpies of the Australian Football League.

The Magpies departed Flagstaff Friday morning for their return to Melbourne after a two-week stay here, the team’s first training camp at NAU’s Center for High Altitude Training.

It included weight-training sessions at the Skydome, football skills exercises, running, boxing and an assortment of other activities – mountain biking in Sedona, trekking to the top of Mount Humphreys, hiking the Grand Canyon and completing a series of obstacle-course/roping activities on NAU’s Challenger Course on which Nicholas Hageman and his staff tailored the…