This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Assistant head coach Ed Lamb is bringing the guitar.

No word yet on who's bringing the marshmallows.

Believe it or not, the BYU football team will camp out Friday and Saturday nights at Quail Creek State Park in Southern Utah, one of the activities on their trip to St. George this weekend.

As has been publicized heavily, the Cougars will bus to St. George on Friday morning and practice at 3:30 p.m. that afternoon at Dixie High School. The practice is part of a FanFest celebration and open to the public.

Players and coaches will meet the public and sign autographs, etc., after the practice. Then the Cougars will stay in the great outdoors, trekking to some private land near Quail Reservoir.

They will all sleep in tents, even the coaches.

"Yeah, even Kalani [Sitake]," offensive coordinator Ty Detmer said. "We are all in tents. No hotels. We are going to the lake Saturday to let the guys have some fun and just relax and just have a great team bonding experience for everybody. They get to see the coaches in a relaxed setting."

Apparently, the Cougars camped out for a night last spring in Heber City, and it was such a hit that the players wanted another campout, only longer.

Sitake delivered.

"It will be good to get down there," the head coach said Wednesday. "We have a lot of fans in that area, so a lot of them come to practices up here and be around us as much as they want. But we will go down there this time. It will be a good change of scenery for our players. I think we will be able to accomplish a lot of things and just have some good team-building activities and things like that."

Detmer said Lamb was in a band, so he will play the guitar at the campfire every night.

"That was a neat experience last year, just seeing those guys playing Monopoly around the campfire and different games, and just hanging out," Detmer said. "We had to limit some of the activities this time. There is always a prankster on every team. So, good times."

Linebacker Butch Pau'u said the players have been looking forward to the trip for quite some time.

"We are all really excited," Pau'u said. "Last year that camping trip brought the entire team closer together. We all have our groups. The linebackers hang out with the linebackers, D line with D line, O line with O line. But that, you saw everyone just mingling with each other. I stayed up with some of the receivers until 5 in the morning, just chatting away and getting to know each other. So, it was really nice."