High School football playoff travel horror stories

One of my brothers is an SID in that conference.

The travel is amazing.

Because it is D-III and nobody cares, the implosion of the NAIA and general realignment of small college athletics, you are seeing some insanity in regards to travel and no one is talking about it. The smaller schools, the ones so dependent on athletes for enrollment, are doubling down on sports and the road trips just get longer.

 

That's insane.

 

I've had only one long trip for a playoff game, a D3 one that was two states over. I did, however, once hit a deer while going around 65-70 mph during a 1 1/2-hour drive from a high school one. I managed to make it home despite having some extremely cockeyed headlights. It cost me about $1,500 for repairs.

I almost forgot about this one but I once blew out a tire (I mean shredded) while on a five-or-so-hour drive to a state soccer tournament. I was very lucky that it happened in a nearby town. I was probably back on the road in less than two hours.

 

Was it McCallie or Baylor? I'm guessing McCallie.

 

McCallie, if I remember correctly. Seems like the game was at MUS.

 

In the same Division II conference: Western New Mexico University (Silver City, NM) and Black Hills State University (Spearfish, SD). 1130 miles. WNMU also has conference road trips of 982 and 1031 miles. Their closest conference opponent is 357 miles away.

 

Might not classify as a horror story, but in MN, two conference opponents 28 miles apart traveled ~150 miles each to play each other in the state championship game.

 

Similar thing happened with us some years ago in baseball. The state association used a three-team pod system for the first round of the playoffs where a division champion hosted a three-team, double-elimination tournament with the second- and third-place teams from another division.
Naturally, our two in-town high schools (located about five miles apart) finished second and third and had to travel about 200 miles for their regional. And, just as naturally, they wound up playing each other a couple of times in the regional.
The real kicker came when they got to the championship game. The host school was knocked out early, and then the Saturday night title game got rained out. But instead of playing on a neutral field in Podunk -- or at least one closer to home -- the state association still made the other two schools drive the 200 miles on Monday to play the championship game.

 

Dec. 12-13: Alabama-Huntsville hockey team at Alaska-Fairbanks

Jan. 2-3: Alaska (Anchorage) at Alabama-Huntsville