BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — A total of 64 players will be on the trip as the Illinois Wesleyan football team travels to Finland for an exhibition game against the Finland National Team in Helsinki on Sunday (June 2). Go here for live stats of the game that begins at 8 a.m. Central time.

♦ The IWU spring slogan has been “Suunnitelma alkaa tästä”, which translates in Finnish to “The Plan Starts Here.” After playing the game and spending four days in Helsinki, the team will take an overnight ferry to spend four days in Stockholm, Sweden, before returning June 9.

♦ Each Illinois Wesleyan player is responsible for paying their travel expenses.

♦ “Like every year, our expectations for 2013 are high and it starts with this game,” said IWU head coach Norm Eash. “We got an extra 10 practices this spring and get to play a game. We've been able to evaluate personnel as coaches and are developing great chemistry, which will continue with the trip to the foreign country as a group."

♦ The Finnish national squad is basically an all-star team with players aged 19-38 from some of that nation's top teams.

♦ This is IWU's fifth trip overseas. Previous stops were to Hamburg, Germany (1996); Bergamo, Italy (2001); Paris (2005); and Vienna, Austria (2009). In three of those four seasons following the trip, IWU either shared or won the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin title outright.

♦ The Titans finished 6-4 last season.

♦ NOT PLAYING: Senior quarterback Rob Gallik, who completed a school-record 68 percent of his passes in 2012, still has not been cleared by doctors after surgery to repair a torn ACL suffered in the seventh game. Neither has junior middle linebacker Connor Klein from shoulder surgery. He was last season's Defensive MVP ... Offensive lineman Thomas Pearson had shoulder surgery May 1 and is out ... Senior linebacker Mike Heaton suffered a knee injury during a scrimmage last week and also won't play.