High School football playoff travel horror stories

So here's this story out of Montana:

http://missoulapreps.com/mondak-comes-800-miles-for-win-at-hot-springs/

Team travels 800 mile and three days for a playoff game.

In my state, you have teams making 9 and 10 hours trips for playoff games.

I think this has been a thread here before but I was wondering what's the biggest playoff trip any of you all can remember?

Seems like, in the previous thread, the winner was the high school in Key West going to Tallahassee but I don't remember.

BTW, Google maps says that's about 650 miles or 150 miles short of the Montana trip.

 

Rode the bus with a juco women's hoops team from Santa Maria to Santa Rosa, about 315 miles.

Same thing with said juco's baseball team for NorCal regional in Sacto, about 320 miles.

 

Traveled all the way across the state of New Mexico to cover a football playoff game. About an eight-hour drive.

Did it twice during my time with the NM paper, although the second time around, I was able to carpool with a friend.

 

Thankfully this didn't involve any of our schools, but years ago in Mississippi Southaven (a suburb of Memphis) played Moss Point (on the Gulf Coast) in a best-of-three baseball state championship series. IIRC, Games 1 and 2 were on back-to-back days, so one of them had a 600-mile round trip and then turned around and played the next day.
It went three games, and I think they played the third game in Jackson, in the middle of the state, after taking a day off. That series was also the spark for moving all of the baseball championship series from campus sites to Jackson and then the new Double-A ballpark in Pearl.

 

Don't remember the mileage but many years ago for a second-round playoff baseball game Crossroads of Santa Monica traveled to Coleville, which is on 395 just south of the Nevada border. The coach told us the field was a converted little league field with no pitchers mound. The mound had already been removed because their officials didn't think the team would win its first playoff game.

 

We had a team in the Inland Empire of SoCal that had a first round volleyball game in Mammoth, a 750-mile round trip, and escaped a second round game on Catalina Island when Avalon High School lost.

 

One year one of the teams I covered in the southern half of the state had to travel for to a school way up north for a playoff game. That hour drive was bruutal.
Seriously though, I laugh when I hear league officials, coaches and parents complain about having to play a 7 pm game and how the kids are going to be getting home so late after their commute. Rhode Island is fucked up and I learned that lesson when I covered my first district playoff game in Pennsylvania and had to drive like two hours away.

 

I remember in Virginia Dan River, about 10 miles from the NC border, having to travel to Clarke County, about eight miles south of the Maryland border, for the first round of the Region B Basketball Tournament. The first round of a regional...on a Wednesday night.

 

Never had anything crazy for football, but the 1-A girls' basketball team in my area (north central NC) had a 6-hour drive to the Outer Banks and 2-hour ferry ride for a playoff game. Team lost by 20-plus, two girls got sick on the ferry, and I ended up getting a nice little first-person feature story about the trip because one of the players was an intern for the news department.

 

I don't think Dan River is even that far from North Carolina, probably more like a mile or two. One time I covered Chatham, same neighborhood basically, at Manassas Park in the DC suburbs. But that was hardly a nightmare, they sent two of us on an overnight trip to a city where there was something going on, which was a pretty big treat at the time.

I don't even know if it's possible matchup before a state championship, but in Virginia I can't imagine having to go from Chincoteague to Honaker or somewhere else down in the southwest.

 

In Michigan you get some long trips when the UP teams are involved. Marquette played Fenton (just south of Flint) in the first round either last year or the year before, about an eight hour drive. I covered a Jackson Lumen Cristi game in Marquette back in the day.

 

Lots of long trips when I was out in Arizona. I think Page, right on the Utah border, had to go to Douglas, on the Mexican border, for a game at one point. On a weekday. About an eight-hour round trip, I think. Google Maps has it at 7:53 and 505 miles.