THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: The road trip that seemingly never ended for Coeur d'Alene, Lake City basketball teams

Police cars whizzing by on the shoulder on Interstate 84 in Oregon.

Traffic backed up for miles and miles and miles in the approach to the Blue Mountains, thanks to heavy snowfall in the region.

Update call after update call from the company that the teams rented their charter buses from.

Ringing in the new year near Pendleton, Ore.

Those were just some of the signs that the trip home from southern Idaho for the Coeur d'Alene High boys and girls basketball team, and the Lake City boys basketball squad, was going to be anything but routine.

"I told the kids, I’ve had a lot of New Year’s … you’ll remember this one for the rest of your life. You’ll never forget this New Year’s," Coeur d'Alene boys coach Jon Adams said.

THE COEUR d'ALENE boys and girls teams rode together on the same charter bus, leaving Monday for games Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in the Boise area.

They were supposed to arrive home late Thursday night.

By the time they pulled into the parking lot at Coeur d'Alene High, it was Saturday afternoon around 3:30 — a good day and a half later than expected.

Lake City's boys, meanwhile, left Coeur d'Alene on a charter bus, rented from the same company the Vikings rented from, on Tuesday, the morning of its first game, checked into their motel upon arrival, then beat defending state 5A champion Meridian.

Weather kept the T-Wolves from leaving for home after Thursday's game at Bishop Kelly of Boise. Thanks to the hazardous weather and other circumstances, Lake City didn't arrive back at its school until Saturday around 12:30 p.m.

"I’ve been stranded in Baker City (Ore.) twice in my career, but I don’t think I’ve ever been involved in anything like this," Lake City boys coach Jim Winger said.

Meanwhile, Post Falls, which rode down on a school bus, left early Tuesday, the morning of its first game. After the Trojans' game at Eagle on Thursday afternoon, the team had pizzas delivered to the bus, and hit the road for home.

While weather prevented the Vikings and Timberwolves from coming right home, Post Falls made it over the Blues in Eastern Oregon, and rolled into the school parking lot just before midnight on Thursday — more than a day before the Coeur d'Alene and Lake City teams would arrive home.

"There’s a lot of different reasons we take a yellow school bus," Post Falls coach Mike McLean said, noting the love and respect the program has for its bus driver Jay, nicknamed the G.O.A.T. by the Trojans, and who has driven Post Falls on many road trips, including eastern Idaho and the Seattle area, and to the Boise area numerous times.

McLean also noted the drop-down chains the Post Falls school buses are equipped with, which drop down at the touch of a button and no "chaining up" is required.

Plus ...

"We don’t play with the same kind of budget our friends to the east play with," McLean said. "Charter buses are well over $5,000 for a trip to Boise. We just don’t have that budget."

With I-84 originally closed on Thursday, Post Falls planned to come home up U.S. 95 through Idaho, but when the Trojans heard the interstate was going to be open, they took the Oregon/Washington route home.

"We were prepared," McLean said. "We checked with the hotel. If the roads were closed, we would have stayed.

"I’m not gonna lie; the roads weren’t great, but we were cruising right along."

NORMALLY, WHEN a basketball team plays three games in three days on the road, several hours away, the third game is an afternoon contest.

That way, the visiting team can hit the road at a decent hour after the third game, and make it home by the end of the day.

The "fun" part was over, the games were played, and now teams could relax for the longish ride home.

However, for the Coeur d'Alene High boys and girls basketball teams, and the Lake City boys basketball team, once that third game ended, their "fun" was just beginning.

THE VIKINGS left home a day early, Adams said, to avoid traveling all that way on the day of a game, as well as giving themselves a cushion in case poor road conditions slowed their travel south.

They practiced Monday night in Boise, and had a shootaround on Tuesday morning.

The Coeur d'Alene boys played two 7 p.m. local time games — at Eagle and Bishop Kelly, then a 1 p.m. tipoff at Meridian on Thursday.

The Viking girls played Thunder Ridge of Idaho Falls, Timberline of Boise and Borah of Boise. All games were at Borah.

When the Viking boys' games were done and the girls games were still in progress, the Viking boys hustled over to the site of the girls game and rooted on their schoolmates.

Thursday afternoon, the Vikings heard the pass on I-84 in Oregon was closed, so they stayed another night in Boise — in the same hotel they had just checked out of.

"We coordinated a dinner for everybody (at Applebee's), Adams said. "And one of the parents suggested this karaoke place, and all the kids boys and girls went to this karaoke place.

It was really a fun night for the kids.

"The cool thing, we were out to dinner as a group (of roughly 27, counting players, coaches and parents) and some lady who was sitting at the restaurant picked up the bill for the entire group.

"She said she was a teacher, said she had kids of my own, and said you guys seem like a fun group."

A few parents had driven down to Boise for the games and took their kids home, but most of the players for both teams rode home on the school charter bus.

"Talk about a bonding experience … you’re all in this together," Adams said. "We had one kid that was going to leave with a parent because they had an extra seat (in their car) and he said 'No, I’m staying. We’re in this together.'"

Meanwhile, roughly half of Lake City's boys team rode home with their parents, leaving the T-Wolves with perhaps a half-dozen players, plus coaches and managers.

EARLY FRIDAY morning, the Coeur d'Alene and Lake City teams took off from Boise, caravanning through western Idaho and into eastern Oregon.

Then, the traffic stopped.

"We were on that road (I-84) for hours, bumper to bumper, just trying to get over the pass," Adams said. "We had to get out and put the chains on; I helped doing that.

"We get to the very top of the pass, and almost can see Pendleton down the hill — I think we were 5 miles from Pendleton, and they started exiting everybody off, and just turning them around."

Adams got out and asked a law enforcement officer what was going on.

There was an "incident," he was told, and the guy couldn't elaborate because it was an active investigation.

Turns out there was a truck stolen, a high-speed chase on I-84, and shots fired at the top of Deadman Pass.

"They turned us around, and we’re bumper to bumper all the way back to La Grande," Adams said.

Winger was sitting at the front of the Lake City bus, which was also near the top of the pass.

"I remember sitting there, looking out … what is going on around this place?" he said. "We’re on Deadman Pass. And then there’s Poverty Flats, and there’s Free Emigrant Road. Is there anything positive around here? Like a serene lake, or a peaceful valley?

"Those are the things you are thinking about when you’re sitting on a bus in the middle of winter on an interstate and the traffic isn’t moving ... 'God, what went on here?'"

The Coeur d'Alene and Lake City buses ended up back in La Grande, some 40 miles back down the interstate, headed the opposite direction from home.

Officials from Coeur d'Alene High called and got the Vikings rooms at a motel in La Grande, but the Vikings weren't impressed with the establishment when they arrived.

Especially Nicole Symons, the Vikings girls basketball coach.

"Nicole’s like, 'I can’t have my girls staying at a super-sketchy hotel,'" Adams said.

So the Vikings packed up, got on the bus, trying to find another place to stay. Meanwhile, Adams and Corey Symons, Nicole's husband, an assistant on the Coeur d'Alene girls team, and the men's basketball coach at North Idaho College, went around knocking on doors of semi-trailers, asking truck drivers if they'd heard when the pass might open.

"One of the parents knew someone who was pastor at a church (in La Grande), and he said 'I can open up my church for you guys, you can sleep there tonight if you can need to.'"

The church had a big community room, with a piano and games.

"The kids were playing games, playing piano and having a blast, playing Pictionary, playing video games," Adams said.

Before calling it a night at the church, Adams and Corey checked the on-ramp one last time, to see if anything was going on.

"Bill White (the Coeur d'Alene athletic director) called and said 'I’m looking at the traffic cameras up there on the pass, I think I see traffic going both ways.' So we went back to the on-ramps, and traffic was moving."

So they headed back to the church, packed up and headed out.

Their bus driver, Steve, only had a certain amount of hours left to drive on that day, and he was able to get the Viking teams as far as Kennewick, where the Vikings hunkered down for the night around 1:30 a.m.

After the bus driver got his required 8 hours of sleep, the Vikings headed home the next morning.

LAKE CITY, meanhile, was able to book nine rooms at a motel in La Grande, where the T-Wolves parked it for the night.

Winger decided to relax in his room, and ordered delivery from a Thai place in La Grande.

Eventually, his food arrived.

"I sit down, open up the container … it’s the wrong order," Winger said. "I said, 'This is perfect. This is how this day should end.'"

While they were stuck in traffic heading up the Blues, Adams and Winger both wondered what the police presence was about — until they learned why the cops were there.

"When we went through La Grande (earlier Thursday), I looked over and I see two cop cars, and two different cops standing there with spike strips … " Winger said.

"I never did see anything (at the time), but … The pieces started coming together."

The T-Wolves got up Saturday morning in La Grande, and made it home shortly after noon.

JUNIOR POINT guard Steven Burgess was one of the Vikings on the long bus trip home.

"It was sooooo long, it felt like," Burgess said. "It felt like 18 days; it was wild.

"You couldn’t really sleep comfortably on the bus because of how many people were on it. But it was a fun little road trip; we got to bond with a lot of people."

For the trip over the Blues, the Vikings had picked up sparkling cider for everyone on the bus.

With the players checking their phones, once midnight on New Year's Eve hit, with the Vikings on a bus rolling through Pendleton ...

"Right as New Year’s hit, we were screaming and going crazy, drinking sparkling cider with the team." Burgess said.

Meanwhile, Winger sat in his motel room in La Grande, after the T-Wolves had beaten Meridian, Eagle and Bishop Kelly to remain undefeated, eating food he did not order, and could only laugh at what had happened to the T-Wolves.

"I thought, what the heck, we won all our games down there … it is what it is," Winger said.

Adams summed up the longer-than-expected trip.

"It was one for the ages, and definitely brought the team closer together," he said. "If we can live through that ordeal, we can live through anything."

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @CdAPressSports.