Home cooking an advantage for Navy

Staying home for holidays a bonus for Midshipmen with bowl festivities

No college football team wants to be home for the holidays. That usually means you failed to qualify for a bowl game.

Navy finds itself in the rare position of playing a postseason contest at its home facility, hosting Virginia in the Military Bowl on Dec. 28 at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. So the Midshipmen are going to a bowl without really going anywhere.

Actually, that is not totally true as the Navy players and coaches are staying at the Renaissance Washi ngton Hotel in downtown D.C. from Saturday through Wednesday. As with any bowl, the Midshipmen will participate in a variety of scheduled activities such as a bus tour of the national monuments, a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture and a team dinner at Ben’s Chili Bowl.

However, Navy will take a pass on one standard element of the Military Bowl with head coach Ken Niumatalolo electing to not practice at a high school somewhere in the District of Columbia. Instead, the Midshipmen will board buses and travel back to the Naval Academy for practice sessions scheduled on Monday and Tuesday.

“We’ll make the 45-minute drive back to Annapolis so we can have our training room, our weight room, our equipment room and our meeting rooms,” Niumatalolo said. “I just think from a preparation standpoint you can’t beat your own facilities.”

Navy is one of three schools playing a bowl game in its own stadium this postsea- Military Bowl Thursday, 1:30 p.m. TV: ESPN Radio: 1090 AM; 1430 AM Line: Navy by 31⁄