This winter blast has created thousands of hassles, headaches, backaches and even some scary or dangerous situations here and right over there. It’s curtailed sports schedules, especially at the high school level.
Don’t want a team on a bus on dicey roads.
But sometimes the weather develops faster than expected, or totally unexpectedly. That’s when the MVP of your team has a different type uniform. The bus company’s driver uniform.
You might have seen the photo of an LSU bus – fortunately, not with the Tigers basketball team on it – stuck sideways on a mountain hillside near Fayetteville Monday.
Could have been worse, except for the driver.
Guys (and ladies) like J.D., Lenny and his son Nathan, Eric, Rodney, Bill, Barry, Charley, Oris, John, Miss Suzanne. Mike, who you’ll hear from. Tim, who you’ll hear about.
It’s the fairly non-descript group who drive team buses.
Some are task-oriented, and don’t talk while driving. Some are friendly, some are chatterboxes. Most bond in their own way with the coaches, staff and players, especially if they are regular travel partners.
Some are characters. Bill, past Medicare age but still energetic, unwittingly entertained by balancing huge portions of food on his fork. He wore big & tall clothes. He cleaned every plate. Didn’t spill anything. Had the belt size to prove it.
Many years earlier, Bill drove for the Arkansas Razorbacks basketball powerhouse way back when Eddie Sutton was calling the Hogs. Sutton ended his career at Oklahoma State, and Mike McConathy’s Northwestern teams played an annual paycheck game in Stillwater for several years. Once, Bill was the Demons’ driver. He was delighted because of his past history with Sutton.
This was not the 2005 game when Northwestern ended the Cowboys’ 108-game home win streak against non-conference opponents at Gallagher-Iba Arena. This was 2-3 years earlier, when Okie State blew out the visitors from Natchitoches. The coaches were still cordial in the postgame handshake line, which included everybody on the benches, from assistants to graduate assistants, student managers, and players, led by the head coaches.
And bringing up the rear, this one time, Bill. Seated a couple rows behind the Demons’ bench, in full bus driver uniform, he joined the end of the handshake line just in time to meet Sutton and lock onto his left arm while enthusiastically shaking the coach’s right hand. Doubt Eddie Sutton was ever more puzzled in a postgame handshake. He obviously didn’t remember Bill from more than 30 years ago. His expression was borderline panic until a hustling staff member interrupted.
Barry was a favorite personality,although he had a heavy foot, not only in big-city traffic, but most any time a few vehicles were in range. He quickly earned the nickname “Barry Brakes.”
But he got the Demons home through some pretty dodgy weather many a trip.
High school coaches used to be their team bus drivers. Everybody had a commercial drivers’ license.
“Not as much nowadays, but for a long time, if you didn’t drive a bus, you weren’t going to be a coach,” said McConathy, who played at Airline, always planned on being a coach while starring at Louisiana Tech, and began the Lady Vikings basketball program as their coach/driver. He drove Bossier Parish Community College teams all 16 years he was coaching the Cavaliers – not just his team, but occasionally, others, too.
There are still places, mostly smaller schools, where coach is also the bus driver.
But over the past 20-30 years, that role generally is filled by the pros.
That brings up Tim. Tim Henderson. He is the regular driver for the Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters. This week, he’s their hero. He helped them through 18 hours stopped on Interstate 20, in a miles-long jam, about just five miles from home. You can read about their ordeal in today’s Lincoln Parish Journal, with Malcolm Butler providing an inside account.
McConathy doesn’t make bus trips any more. But the retired coach and erstwhile bus driver remembers countless experiences and like every coach of every team at any level, admires those “bussies” who truly keep it between the ditches when that’s not easy.
Maybe his most frightening passenger experience was traveling back from Conway, Ark., as a snow and ice storm surprised forecasters.
“We drove into town, played the game – and the weather was getting so bad that nobody other than those who had to be there were in the gym – and headed home.
“Coming around a curve on the interstate loop in Little Rock — we weren’t going more than 25-30 mph — we were crossing a bridge and the bus started to slide. For a couple seconds, you didn’t know … fortunately the bridge was at a slight uphill angle from right lane to left, there wasn’t any other vehicle in the left lane, and it was a short bridge. We weren’t going very fast at all, but after that, it was a long time and a lotta miles down the road before we got over 20 mph.
“Another time, coming back from a game at Arkansas, it was cold, cold, and the defroster wasn’t working. We had to get coaches with towels to wipe the windshield so our driver could see the road, or we were gonna be sitting alongside it waiting for a long time for better weather.
“The thing that amazes me still is on all of those trips, with snow and ice or really bad storms, you never saw panic in their eyes, or at least they never let on if they were the least bit jumpy. They just drove. You felt confident because they were. You felt cared for. You felt safe.”
Thanks to people like J.D., Charles, John, Miss Suzanne, Barry Brakes — and Tim, this week’s hero in the 318 AC team bus universe..