One of the joys of the offseason is that there’s time to surf around the Net and find stories I may have missed during the season.
OK, I lied. There’s no time because we’re working on D3hoops.com and another big project this time of year. And there’s no joy in the offseason. It’s too long! However, I really did stumble across a blog entry from a parent of a Loras player who spent 18 hours in a car one weekend to drive from Tennessee to Dubuque for the school’s Homecoming game.
That’s the round trip, though — let’s not get crazy!
I’ve often wondered how many other people are as crazy as we are — and by the ‘we’ I mean those of us at D3football.com who would hop into a car and drive hundreds of miles at the drop of a hat. People like myself, Keith McMillan, Gordon Mann, Ryan Coleman, Pat Cummings, John McGraw. When I read the following, I was hooked:
It’s an estimated 10-to-11-hour sojourn. This is true if a) you average about 60 miles per hour; b) you stop only for gas and snack while you drive; c) you don’t get lost; d) there’s no construction; and e) the traffic cooperates. Those seemed like a lot of factors to have to fall into place, and, even at that, the prospect of 10+ hours in a car, without anyone to share the driving, still seemed pretty daunting. But I’d never seen my son play a college game, and I was determined to make the trek.
It is a great description of some of the great things about Division III football, and it is definitely worth your time to read.
Our son’s very first college game was in Maryville, TN. My wife and I drove 12 hours, 15 minutes the day before to get there. Granted we stopped a million times to go to the bathroom and get snacks but we went straight through. And did the same thing on the return trip. This year we will be making the trip again along with another long trip to Aliance, Ohio on Labor Day Weekend. There may be more as Averett hasn’t posted their 07 schedule and don’t know who they will be replacing Wesley and Guilford with. I didn’t give the long trip a second thought, I would have gone across the country to see him play. It only happens once in your life, so go for it. It will be something you can talk about the rest of your life.
My son and friends made three car trips over the last two years …..two to Salem, Virginia straight through and one two Belton, Texas this year. They video taped each trip with interviews and many shots of some of the worst restrooms in the country……simply hysterical. Drank a lot of Amp to keep awake….on the Texas trip they drank so much they arrived ill and had to stop at their motel first and missed the start of the game which contained the only score with an opening kickoff return for TD……7-0 Whitewater but they drove 18 hours and missed the only score…….
A good game is always worth the drive – always.
I can’t say I have done the same, but I’ll never forget coming off the field after my first D3 defensive series and hear a familiar voice say “Hey 36!”.
I turned around and to my amazement saw my Dad. Apparently he got up at the crack of dawn to drive the 6+ hours from Connecticut to Rochester to see my team play against St John Fisher.
I don’t remember much else from the game, but I’ll never forget seeing him standing there on the sideline.
I have made 3 trips from Alliance to Salem to watch Mount, and I’d do it every year. Especially when you get a group of friends together, put up a tailgating spread, and enjoy the weather like this year! Some of my best memories have come from those trips and other road trips alike! Looking back on it, the drive was most of the fun, especially with my friends!
That’s gotta hurt — making that drive to Texas and missing the score.
While this subject is great, and it is awesome to see the level of support by many parents/ fans, it also made me realize, as a Capital and OAC fan, how spoiled we fans are here in the heartland of D3 football. All 10 OAC schools are within a few hours drive of one another and there are plenty of nearby NCAC, HCAC, and PAC teams to get the 10th game if you want. Even schools like Mount, who has recently started looking outside the region for a 10th game, only make one long regular season trip.
My Dad saw all 40 of my games in college, a feat made much easier by the fact that the longest road trips we took were to Bethany, WV and to Gannon (Erie, PA).
I’m not saying I WOULDN’T drive 18 hours to watch a game, just glad that I don’t HAVE to.
We who flew to the game had a good laugh at them for missing the only score. In four years I never missed a game and it was the most fun I have had for an extended period of time. Made a lot of new friends, traveled all over the country, and eaten at every Perkins Pancake House in Wisconsin. It helps when the team you are watching is very good but that was the least important part of the experience…..our whole family had a great time for ten to fifteen weeks of the football season for how ever long it lasted…….
Between the 1995 and 2000 seasons I drove Pa. to So. Eastern Va. five times, to Ferrum twice, Chowan once, No.Car. once, Boston once, Indianapolis once, No.New Jersey many times, And of course Dover every other game. I did NOT drive to Madison Wisc.but I do know that the Wesley players were on a bus for 14 hrs for that trip.
During the 2000 season we made weekends out of most of our trips, stopping at all of the historical sites along they way. But we would always drive home usually thru Dover after the games. We met great people along the way and got to see a lot of towns and cities. Would I do it all again? In a heart beat.
After flying to Charlotte from Dallas the evening before, my wife and I drove to Salem the morning of the 2004 Stagg Bowl between Linfield and MH-B (the Crusaders’ appearance was a serendipity…we had tickets before knowing which teams would be playing). After the game, we drove to Baltimore to visit our daughter. All told, the driving was about 9-10 hours as I recall, punctuated by a great three-hour game. The extraordinary scenery in North Carolina and Virginia was worth every minute of the drive.
This past year was a lot of fun going to all the wesley games except for the one in alabama. i agree with labart96, but i am coming from the stands side of it. my son would probably not admit it, but i know he is glad to see his mom and i in the stands before the game. although we did not drive to whitewater, a saturday 630 am flight to milwaukee followed by an hour drive to whitewater, breakfast at mcd’s, a 15 minute wait for the local beer distributor to open and tailgating by 1030, as they say in the commercial, PRICELESS. i would not give up that experience for anything. the results were not what i would have wanted, but i was glad i was there to congratulate my son for a game well played, the only td catch for wesley; by the way on a side note – great sequence of the catch by the D3 camera man: and he never quit. this year wesley will be playing more road games and i cant wait for the road trips. august could not get here fast enough for me. we have met some nice people before and after the games and look forward to meeting many more.
Myself and two other friends made the drive from Belton, Texas to Dover, Delaware for the game between UMHB and Wesley College. The drive was 25 hours each way and a total of 3200 miles. It was sad to see the loss, but a road trip I will never forget and would do it again in a heartbeat.
One side note to my earlier post. When we drove to Indianapolis to play Butler there were 6 people in the Wesley stands. If you have ever been to Butler’s massive bowl stadium you would understand that 6 of us seated together did not make for an intimidating site. But we had the best seats in the house though.
I’ve never driven more than four hours for a DIII football game, and only about five for the DIII Women’s Final Four last year (and that would have been less if not for the traffic in NYC). I have flown from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin and from Pennsylvania to Texas, though, and I can’t think of anything else I’d rather use my frequent flier miles on. I can’t wait until September when I can trek to Oregon to do it again for the HSU/Linfield game.
For most of my trips, I’ve been fortunate to have the comraderie and good coversation from Ron Boerger, Ralph Turner and Glenn Bratcher to melt the miles away painlessly. But even without someone to visit with on the way to and from the games, I’d still rather be at a DIII game on a given Saturday than about 99% of the other games I could attend.
In 2004 I was in my first year teaching and coaching in South Carolina. Capital and Wittenberg were opening the season in a highly anticpated non-conference game. The varsity team at the school I was teaching at had a Friday night game 3 hours away and they were leaving school early to get there, as a first year teacher my principal did not want to allow me to leave early less than a month into my first year. That left me with a free Friday and free weekend as I did not have football again til Sunday afternoon at 2 pm.
With the open Friday night my weekend looked somewhat like this, if I remember correctly.
Friday
3:00 PM school day ends
3:15 PM watch film with 9th Grade Team of Thursday night game
4:45 PM finish watching film
5:05 PM arrive at apartment
5:30 PM on road for trip to Columbus for game
Saturday
2:30 AM arrive at TT Murph’s, favorite college bar where my ex-rommmate, also an asistant coach at Capital, works a few nights a week
3:15 AM go back to his apartment to collapse onto couch
10:00 AM up and at head over ot Bernlohr Stadium for game, talk to old coaches, former teammates, relax in office, introduced to the legendary Pat Coleman by Coach Collins “Hey Pat, it’s E Lee!” watch Capital women’s basketball practice from second floor observation deck, , hang out in football offices
1:30 PM kick off
4:30 PM game over, Cap is victorious, can’t remember exact score, I never can. 50 something to 20 something I think.
5:00 PM back in offices, friends start to dub game tape, look at stats in SID Lenny Reich’s office
5:30 PM as coaching staff prepares to head to a victory celebration, I hit the road.
Sunday
2:30 AM arrive home in Rock Hill, SC. Fall asleep.
All in all it was a great weekend!
I remember meeting you and you describing that trip. Good times.
Here are two trips that happened that I still look back now get a laugh out of. Though when they took place I must admit to being just a bit upset!!!
After driving most of Friday night, over eight hrs., to get to a motel between Roanoke and Rocky Mount VA. we had just settled in when a party broke out in the rooms surrounding ours. It’s was a nightmare with people coming and going banging on doors and yelling amd then yes moaning!!!! We believed then and to this day that there was a lot on of transactions of ill repute that hqapppend there that night. After our sleepless night we went to the Wesley/Ferrum game which was played in near 100 deg. heat. After the game we drove straight through to Pa. Needless to say we stayed at a Days Inn our next trip to Rocky Mount.
The second trip into the twilight zone was to Boston. After traveling to Conn. to stay with relatives and travel to MT Ida the next day we were suprised to find no one home. After all attempts to reach our hosts failed we procede to Boston and ended up hopelessly lost for the entire night. We had found a police station and got directions to a hotel. What the officer failed to tell us was that Rt.95 and the road name he said were one and the same and driving around the city all night we found the police station again and were set straight when the officer asked if the previous officer had told us that 95 and …. hwy were the same road. We finally found a hotel and we were given a room for 4 hrs for $110…. And yet after those trips we continued to go to away games and take on new advetures. Seven yrs. since our son has been out and we still go to games BUt only to Dover and towns We know!!
In 2004 and 2005 I drove I took a Friday off work to drive the 10. 5 hours from Central CA to McMinnville, OR to catch Wildcat playoff games on Saturday and back home on Sunday. The 2005 trip up took a little longer as there was pretty good snow falling over Siskyou summit. Solo both times. Playoff football, especially D-III playoff football, it’s awesome.
PA_Wesleyan – I think I stayed by that same group of people in a similar hotel once before!!!!
I drove from Iowa to Oregon…TWICE. Once in 2002 and again in 2003 when Wartburg played at Linfield.
1,916 miles ONE WAY!!
27 hours each way….drove all the way through the night both ways.
labart96,
Great story, it made me think of my own parents and their non-stop travels to away games. Hearing my Dad’s voice and seeing him and my Mom in the stands are some of the best memories of my college days. Hats off to all the parents that make the effort, it means more than you can ever imagine.
Alfred University’s Pep Band is not averse to hitting the road in following the Saxons. Probably most memorable was the 2005 opener, a 904-mile round trip excursion to Lexington, VA to see the Saxons drop a 36-22 game to an up-and-coming General squad in 90 degree heat. That venture started late Friday afternoon with a trip to Grottoes, VA where the band slept in Pep’s pop-up in Pep’s cousin’s front yard. Said cousin, a fitness center maintenance man at JMU and accomplished drummer, joined the band for the game in Lexington.
In 2006, the band logged 1472 miles in playing three Saxon road games at Springfield, at Hartwick and at Utica. Pep did another 550 miles to see the AU-St. Lawrence game sans band. The band resisted the temptation to take the 1325-mile round trip to Bangor, ME for the Husson game. Band members are full-time students, after all. Many many AU parents attend the Saxons’ road games as well as AU alumni and friends.
The AUPepBandwagon, a 1992 Grand Caravan, now has more than 266,000 miles….and is looking forward to 2007 jaunts to Thiel, Norwich(?), Hobart (Geneva), Ithaca and Fisher (Pittsford).
I have not missed covering a Cortland game since early 2004. Rowan is approximately a 9 hour round trip for me, Buffalo State probably 8 hours. I do it because I love our football program, and because there is nothing like a sunny crisp fall day of D3 football.
Hey, only 11 days until pitchers and catchers report. And only 6 months until training camps open again!
For the first three seasons after I graduated from Linfield, I worked as a bouncer in the Seattle area to pay my Grad School Tuition. In a job like that, you can’t really get weekends off to go watch a football game, so I had to make “The Run” as it came to be known.
After I finished my shift and clean up duties I would hop in my car at 3am with two energy drinks on the passenger seat. I would then drive 4 hours to a friend’s house who lived a half an hour from McMinnville Oregon, home of the Wildcats. I would sleep for two hours, and then head off to the store to purchase my tailgating necessities. After a full day of tailgating and watching my Wildcats play, I would hop back in the car and drive the 4 and a half hours back to Seattle to start my shift at 8pm and then work to 3am again.
The trip was always worth the drive and lack of sleep. Although, finishing Grad School and getting a professional job does makes the drive down much more bearable when done during the day, and I can sleep for more than two hours.
…and only 2 days until national high school football signing day!!!!!!
The longest road trip (pilgrimage) for me was from Chicago, IL to Salem, Va. If I remember correctly, we left at 11pm CST and arrived at 9am EST. We drove straight thru to the tailgate at the 2005 National Title game. I think we were the third car in the lot…
I woke up in West Virginia (I was driving the third leg) at 330am and had to start driving thru those mountains. Yes, I say mountains because I am from perhaps the flattest state in the union. I would like to say the sunrise was beautiful, but, I was too shook up from the accident I saw right in front of me (no more than 100 yards) near the Virgina Tech campus. I’m pretty sure several people ended up in the E.R.
I’m not trying to bring anybody down, I’m just recalling the events.
Anyhoots, other road trips (all with Chicago as the home base) I’ve taken include, but, are not limited to:
(and I’m sorry I can’t remember the time it took to drive only the good time that was had)
1. UW-Lacrosse
2. Monmouth
3. Ripon
4. UW-Eau Claire
5. UW-Oshkosh
6. St. Norberts
7. North Central (doesn’t really count)
8. North Park (see #7)
9. Wheaton (again, see #7)
10. UW-Platteville
11. UW-Steven’s Point
12. Carthage
13. Carroll
14. UW-Stout
Way too long winded, I know, but what a way to spend a weekend especially with the Midwest’s fall colors in full effect!
Thanks for making me think back and smile about the longest road trip I ever made with my late brother along with my young son who was then only 5. The 2002 Mount Union season began with Wisconsin Whitewater and we packed up my old Astro van for what proved to be a nine hour trip to UWWW. This complete trip and game story can be found at
http://www.mtunionfootball.com/2002season/02whitewater.htm
With that in mind, this year concluded with my son, now 9, and I making the 780 mile round trip to the Stagg Bowl and back in exactly 24 hours. Leaving the Akron area around 5 AM Saturday, we pulled into the parking lot in Salem at 11:15. After lunch with old friends and an afternoon of partying in the parking lot we retired to the game. The post game included about an hour and half of winding down and saying good byes. We put Salem behind us at about 10:45 and at 5:00 AM we were back in Mogadore Ohio, one tired old man and little boy, but I’d do it again in a heart beat.
One of the better day trips was in ’05 when a band of D3 nuts loaded up in Minneapolis and headed for Stevens Point for their opener against Hardin-Simmons. 6am approx departure and arrived in time for a bite and off to the game. Sat with a group from HS and they couldn’t figure out “what the hey?” some SJU & MUC fans were doing at their game. “We just like watching good D3 football” Game over..jump in van and head back towards Minneapolis…
Oh what to our surprise, half way back to the twin cities we “noticed” SJU was playing Eau Claire in “Eau Claire” at 7pm, 7:15pm, 7:30pm, 7:45pm some minor detail called lightning got in the way of an on time start. More good football for the good guys. A few beverages with some Eau Claire fans at a local Holiday Inn and then the 90 mile drive back to the TC’s and our journey ended about 2am. Not a bad day of football especialy to kick of the season.
Another whirlwind trip has already been documented by RC and our weekend blitz to Alliance for SJF vs MUC in the playoffs. Another win by the good guys. Only to be topped by the 2006 Stagg Bowl and …
Number 9, Number 9, Number 9, Number 9, Number 9, Number 9..
So sayeth the Beatles and you just don’t MUC with the Beatles.
15 Weeks on the road (5 Raider games) to a D3 game every week in ’06. Fun! Is it August yet?
Wow,
This is one of our best blog threads of all-time, I can’t believe I missed it. Well I can. If it’s from January, I was hunkered down on that year-in-review gargantuan … but maybe we should revive it in-season and share more stories.