Elk heads, and other oddities from bus trips - Part 2

Fourth in a series

The Post Falls High boys basketball team has been to Las Vegas twice in recent years, and plays many nonleague/tournament games in central and western Washington.

So Post Falls coach Mike McLean, in his 12th season at his alma mater, has a few more stories to tell.

“Two years ago we had a three-game road trip to the Vancouver, Wash., area,” he recalled. “I-84 was snowy through the gorge, but we made it through without any issues. Got to the metro area (Portland/Vancouver) and they had some freezing rain that then turned to rain. Our bus got stuck in traffic for 4 1/2 hours on I-84 because people were stopping their cars and getting out and walking away. Very foreign to us that live in North Idaho.

“We finally got to our hotel and stayed for two nights. Our games eventually were cancelled because of the threat of snow and we left without playing. During the day, our players and staff walked to the local mall and were able to function just fine in the 36-to-40-degree weather ... only trip we have ever had games cancelled because of a possible weather event?”

ANOTHER YEAR, Post Falls had the ambitious idea to play six games in six days — three in a tournament at North Idaho College, followed by three at a tourney in Boise.

With no rest day in between.

“We played in the evening (at NIC), then went home, changed our clothes and then left Post Falls High School at 10 p.m. for the trip south,” McLean recalled. “It was New Year’s Eve and we pulled the bus over at a rest area just before Pendleton, Ore., to celebrate with our team and staff on the bus with sparling apple cider.

“Got into La Grande, Ore., around 1:30 a.m., slept in our hotel until 10 a.m., went to a shootaround at Eastern Oregon University (in La Grande) at noon and then left for Boise. Stayed and played in the Grove for two more nights after that.

“We went 5-1 during those 6 days.

“Won a state title that year.”

MIKE CURTIS was head coach of the Post Falls High girls basketball team from 1984-94.

“We had an elk head tied to the back of the bus once,” he recalled. “We went up and played Colville, beat them. We were coming home, somebody behind us kept hitting the high/lows, so the bus driver pulled over. And, sure enough, the kids from Colville had tied up an elk head. Somebody shot an elk, and tied it on a rope on our rear bumber. We were dragging that elk head all the way home. We weren’t to Chewelah yet. Nice kids. That was the last time we went up there.”

DUANE WARD first started coaching in the 1960s. He had two stints as head coach for the Bulldog boys varsity, and last year completed his second stint as head coach of the Bulldog girls.

(Naturally, adhering to the adage that ‘coaches coach,’ he is an assistant on the girls varsity this season under head coach Will Love, his assistant the past few years.)

Ward’s first year as head coach of Sandpoint’s boys was the 1968-69 season.

“In those days, when we played Lewiston and Clarkston, we stayed all night, played one game Friday night and the next one on Saturday night,” he recalled. “We played Clarkston on a Friday night, and then we played Lewiston on a Saturday night. And then we headed up the hill to go back to Sandpoint, and there was a big storm, and we got up to the top of the Lewiston hill, and the state police turned us around and told us that we were going to have to go back down and spend another night in Lewiston.

“So that’s what we did.

“We got up the next morning and fed the kids, and headed for Sandpoint ... anyway, the roads were terrible, and my wife (Marilyn) was riding in a car. The roads weren’t great, but they weren’t bad until we got to the Bonner County line, and they hadn’t been plowed.

“The car my wife was riding in got bogged down, and we had to stop the bus and blink the lights and the kids pushed them out.

“Then we finally got into Sandpoint and we got to the high school, and we couldn’t get into the high school because the snow drifts were too high. So we turned around and went to the Pastime Cafe. And all the power was out. And they had snowmobiles at the Pastime, and they gave all the kids (and coaches) a ride home on the snowmobiles. I lived out at Sagle at the time, and so I had to go stay at my inlaws ... I think it was 2 or 3 days before we could get back home. So it was a heckuva road trip.”

ONE TIME, the Mullan boys basketball team had a game in Clark Fork.

At least, the Tigers thought the game was in Clark Fork.

“We left about 2 o’clock,” Mullan coach John Drager recalled. “We all get in the bus and we’re heading to Clark Fork, just pulling out of Mullan, and a bus was just coming into Mullan. I looked at it, and it was Clark Fork.

“Holy crap,” Drager said. “We had it screwed up. We were headed to Clark Fork and they were headed to our place. Luckily we just happened to notice the bus, or we’d have been up there.

“So we turned around and headed back. ‘We were just headed up to your place,’” Drager told the Wampus Cat coaches when both teams had reached the Mullan Pavilion.

“I don’t know who was right or wrong,” Drager concluded. “But anyway, we played in Mullan.”

BRYAN CHASE, former girls basketball coach at St. Maries and current boys basketball coach for the Lumberjacks, relayed a story of a road trip involving the St. Maries volleyball team and coaches Mitch Santos and Todd Gilkey.

“(They) were coming back from a late-night volleyball match and hit a bear with the bus,” Chase recounted. “They tried to find it while the kids were on the bus, but didn’t have any luck. So they went back out after the bus dropped the kids off and found it and processed it.”

COACHES: If you are a current or former basketball coach in North Idaho, and have stories you’d like to share of crazy bus trips, humorous encounters with referees or bizarre occurences during games, feel free to email me at mnelke@cdapress.com

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.