Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
We loaded the bus at 7 am. It was in the days before some self-serving bureaucrat at the Wyoming Department of Education decided that travel buses were an unessential, useless mode of transportation for high school students.
The “Tiger Bus” was a used Trailways coach, with pairs of reclining seats on each side of the aisle and ample storage above the seats in overhead racks, and even more underneath the bus.
For breakfast we fed the team a Vimbo’s in Wheatland before driving south to Sybille Canyon and west to the ghost town of Bosler. From there we took U.S. Highway 30, the old road, that remains open when Interstate 80 is blown shut.
Highway 30 was constructed along the lines of the Union Pacific Railroad. The original surveyors of America’s first transcontinental railroad were careful to avoid potential snowdrifts, valleys that acted as wind tunnels and other natural dangers. When the interstate highway system was under construction in President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration, Washington was already too big and too arrogant to pay attention to little things like snowdrifts and wind corridors. The feds ignored the suggestions of Wyoming engineers, farmers and ranchers that lived on the proposed route.
Now we have an interstate that is often closed more than it’s open in the winter months, but you can still get to there from here on U.S. 30.
We stopped in Rock River to pick up lunch at the now-defunct Lincoln Hotel. I remember their French fries were exquisite.
From there it was a straight run through Medicine Bow, Hanna, Walcott Junction and the final 40 miles to Saratoga.
We kicked off at 3:30 and surprisingly led 7-0. We’d graduated most of the team off our 1981 State Championship squad but had talent remaining. The Panthers had everyone back, and we’d only beaten them 13-0 the year before in Lusk. They reeled off 39 unanswered points and we fell 39-7.
The return trip started at about 7 pm by a different route.
We drove back to Medicine Bow, then turned north to Casper. We fed the boys at around 10 pm that night, loaded the bus for home and arrived back at Niobrara County High School a little after 1 am. It wasn’t quite a 24-hour trip, but it was a long day.
Wyoming is a huge state, with miles of emptiness between little points of light in the darkness. Getting a team across the state to play at a specific time so officials can work the game, concession stands can be set up and fans can plan to attend is difficult, sometimes impossible with the viciousness of late fall and winter weather.
Bus drivers, and transportation directors are the unsung heroes of athletics no matter the division you play in. A trip from Gillette to Rock Springs is a jaunt, so is one from Hulett to Dubois, or Lovell to Burns. These are all examples of games played in recent years.
My longtime friend, Ernie Mecca and I were discussing travel at a Conference Tournament at Byron one season.
As I complained about the distances to Byron, Basin, Burlington and Lovell he stopped me in mid-sentence.
“Before you whine any more, remember we drive a hundred miles to Shoshoni, then we play the same schools you do.”
Ernie had a point. Schools like Dubois, Cokeville, Lusk, and Little Snake River are a long way from anywhere. They’re isolated by mountain ranges, and vast open spaces.
A good driver can cut those miles into easier chunks.
I’m grateful to the many wonderful bus drivers that took my teams around the county, and around the state. I think of the late Roy and Twila Maxson, Kathy McCoy, Shirley Anderson and Roscoe Haggerty from my days in Shoshoni.
Roy added the dimension of counselor and friend to those long nights in the Basin, far from home on sub-zero roads, with a few dozen high school boys sound asleep behind us.
After a close loss one night up north, Roy and I were going over the game at around midnight. My friend and assistant Harold Bailey was sound asleep across from us and the bus was silent aside from the rumbling of the wheels on the highway.
I was confused at the outcome. Rocky Mountain had lost by big scores to teams we’d beaten, but they had the wherewithal to beat us by three.
“Everybody plays their best game against Shoshoni,” Roy said.
That statement helped, and we beat the Grizz the next time we played them.
Kathy was a joy to have driving my junior high football and track teams. She was fun, the kids loved her and she made the miles melt away.
Roscoe was a good man, with a quick wit, and a few comments after each game, usually towards the officials. He and Harold shared a sentiment, they both told me at different times as we pulled out of the Wind River Canyon on the red hills heading into Thermopolis. “You don’t get many calls north of Thermop.”
Playing in the Big Horn Basin wasn’t for the weak of heart, and it still isn’t. The kids are tough, hardnosed and as Harold often said, “There must be something in the water up there.”
Shirley did her job with a smile, and not much conversation. She was a pro behind the wheel.
Twila was the opposite. She was non-stop conversation from start to finish. She was the grandma on board to hundreds, perhaps thousands of Shoshoni kids over the years.
One night Harold and I had a conversation on what hell must be like. He came up with this gem.
“We’ve just played Lovell, you were thrown out, we lost by one point, it’s 35 below zero, it’s snowing, Twila is driving and Rita is playing Alabama’s Greatest Hits.”
Twila never set speed records. She was deliberate, safe and reliable. The thump, thump, thump of the expansion strips of asphalt highway were a steady drum beat to the night. One night, really an early morning, we were going through the canyon when I peaked over her shoulder. The speedometer read 38. It was snowing, the canyon was icy, and Twila wasn’t about to risk the safety of the kids. That’s where Harold’s reference to Twila came in.
My late friend Rita Isabel loved Alabama, and Harold was referring to “18 Wheeler Roll On” which was her favorite.
You get a lot of chances to think on long road trips, but sometimes it’s more of an instinctive reaction.
As we neared the intersection of Highway 14 on our way down Highway 310 from a game in Byron one of the freshmen stood up and told me he was sick.
Roy was already slowing to stop and I asked him to open the doors. I grabbed the boy by the belt and the back of his jacket as he threw up. Most of it left a strip down the highway, most, not all.
The smell started to waft back. On a team bus the freshmen sit in front, with the sophomores in the middle and the juniors and seniors mixed toward the back.
In a chain reaction, the boys began vomiting as the smell reached them.
We stopped in Greybull. Roy called the Greybull High School transportation director. He opened their bus barn for us. The boys pulled their gear off, he hosed down the interior of the floor of the bus. We waited a few minutes for things to dry then drove back to Shoshoni.
It’s all part of the job that the experts in the stands never see.
You should thank the bus drivers that keep your kids safe and make the games possible. They’re heroes of the highway.