Post by Banana Cat on Jun 14, 2011 0:26:20 GMT -5
Pretty funny article on the Drillers dive to the Ultimate Bowl.
www.nationofblue.com/ultimate-road-trip-7815/
www.nationofblue.com/ultimate-road-trip-7815/
The Ultimate Road Trip
Scott Anderson
June 12th, 2011
Covering the first season of the Ultimate indoor Football League has been fun for me this season.
After the Eastern Kentucky Drillers beat the Huntington Hammer last weekend, I was offered a chance to ride the team bus to Saginaw, Michigan for the UIFL's first championship game, aptly named the Ultimate Bowl.
Of course, I wanted to go, so I accepted along with WYMT's Jeff Archer, who has been covering the Drillers as long as I have this season.
We were to leave on Thursday night, at Midnight, from Jenny Wiley State Resort Park in Prestonsburg, KY.
We had to wait on one of the players who had to work, wide receiver Matt Barbour, and as you will see it was a good thing we did wait on him.
This story begins with the Drillers thinking of winning a championship, but turns into hoping they just make it to Saginaw alive.
The UIFL, who is based in Canton, Ohio, had sent a bus for the Drillers to travel. In the tight budgeted league who is in it's first year, this should have been a win for the team. The bus was the Canton Cougars' bus, a team that only won one game the entire season.
I want you to imagine right now 5 port a potties on a hot summer day at a concert or any other large event and the odor you would smell if you had to sit in one of those outhouses.
That is what the bus smelled like. The restroom in the back had not been cleaned and the horrible stinch was the first sign that this trip was going to be memorable, and not in a good way.
So the Canton Cougars Eastern Kentucky Drillers team bus was off, taking the Bert T Combs Mountain Parkway towards Lexington to pick up more of the roster who also had to work that day.
If you have ever driven on the Parkway, you know it is not the straightest road, and half of it is 2 lane.
The bus driver obviously wasn't much on the 2 lane portion of the trip because he was hitting every rumble strip on the side of the road and just the overall feel of the team and everyone else on the bus was "This guy can't drive!"
After we finally made it through the Parkway, we went to Lexington and picked up Ellery Moore and others off of Nicholasville Road. During that part of the journey, which took over a hour, we drove into 2 trees and hit at least 3 curbs.
Who is this driver?? I know it is hard to drive a huge bus like this, especially in a neighborhood, but cmon.... I already had thoughts that this guy couldn't drive, but I began to think something was wrong with him as well.
Keep in mind, this team has to play a game in a little over 17 hours, and sleep and rest is a pretty big priority. Living is too.
I am going to jump ahead, past the 1 hour gas station stop, where the driver forgot to put gas in the bus, to the drive through Indiana and Michigan.
I didn't get any sleep during this night, because everytime I dozed off, the bus would feel like it was running off the road. There was one time, heck 3 or 4 times, our bus was so close to a semi-truck, you couldn't put a playing card in between our vehicles.
Of course this caused Drillers players and me, to yell out because if we didn't we were surely to hit the trucks next to us. There were times on I-75 I just put my head between my legs like there was an earthquake... it was that bad.
The culmination of this bus ride from hell, ends near Flint, Michigan as we are flying down the interstate like OJ Simpson down the LA Freeway...and we had a cop behind us too.
I noticed out of the sideview mirror there was a policeman behind us with lights and siren blaring for at least 10 minutes. I actually tapped on Matt Barbour's shoulder, who was sitting across the aisle from me, and said, "Look in the mirror, he is pulling us over."
After the 10 mile bus chase with the Michigan State Police, the bus driver finally realizes that he is the one being pulled, and merges over to the shoulder.
The policeman comes to the side of the bus, gun drawn, and asks the driver to come outside. Come to find out, the driver was also packing a gun, and had to throw it over into the grass.
Keep in mind, this is a bus containing a team that was supposed to play in a championship game in a little over 8 hours...and now they are sitting on the side of the road with the bus driver getting arrested for multiple violations.
The reason the policeman gave for pulling us over was cars on the highway had called 911 because the bus was wreckless and they thought the driver was either asleep or drunk.
After the driver sat in the back of the cruiser for what seemed like another hour, he was brought back, but could not drive.
Great, now the bus doesn't have a driver, and we are 8 hours from Kentucky...what are we going to do now??
This is where wide receiver Justin Lamb enters this story. Lamb, who has a part time job with Pikeville college driving a bus, has his cdl. So, Lamb, who learns how to drive the Canton Cougars' bus on the side of the interstate, drives the last hour of the trip to Saginaw.
Yes, I am telling the truth...a wide receiver, who ends up scoring 3 touchdowns in the Ultimate Bowl, also drove the bus to the game.
Lamb didn't have the easiest drive either: having to drive in the rain, in road construction, and had to maneuver through 2 turnabouts to safely put us at the hotel.
This is what the Drillers had to go through just to get to their game, in which they fought valiantly, losing to the eventual UIFL Champion Saginaw Sting 86-69.
The game was the highest scoring in UIFL history as Sting QB Tommy Jones threw a record 10 touchdowns. Drillers QB Al Holland had 9.
Matt Barbour, who had as much sleep as I did, caught a record 6 touchdown passes.
Bus Driver Justin Lamb, who also drove the bus back to Kentucky the next day, had 3 TD catches.
The Drillers might have lost, but considering the circumstances, they did pretty well to even stay in the game for as long as they did.
Heck, they did pretty well to stay alive...
Scott Anderson
June 12th, 2011
Covering the first season of the Ultimate indoor Football League has been fun for me this season.
After the Eastern Kentucky Drillers beat the Huntington Hammer last weekend, I was offered a chance to ride the team bus to Saginaw, Michigan for the UIFL's first championship game, aptly named the Ultimate Bowl.
Of course, I wanted to go, so I accepted along with WYMT's Jeff Archer, who has been covering the Drillers as long as I have this season.
We were to leave on Thursday night, at Midnight, from Jenny Wiley State Resort Park in Prestonsburg, KY.
We had to wait on one of the players who had to work, wide receiver Matt Barbour, and as you will see it was a good thing we did wait on him.
This story begins with the Drillers thinking of winning a championship, but turns into hoping they just make it to Saginaw alive.
The UIFL, who is based in Canton, Ohio, had sent a bus for the Drillers to travel. In the tight budgeted league who is in it's first year, this should have been a win for the team. The bus was the Canton Cougars' bus, a team that only won one game the entire season.
I want you to imagine right now 5 port a potties on a hot summer day at a concert or any other large event and the odor you would smell if you had to sit in one of those outhouses.
That is what the bus smelled like. The restroom in the back had not been cleaned and the horrible stinch was the first sign that this trip was going to be memorable, and not in a good way.
So the Canton Cougars Eastern Kentucky Drillers team bus was off, taking the Bert T Combs Mountain Parkway towards Lexington to pick up more of the roster who also had to work that day.
If you have ever driven on the Parkway, you know it is not the straightest road, and half of it is 2 lane.
The bus driver obviously wasn't much on the 2 lane portion of the trip because he was hitting every rumble strip on the side of the road and just the overall feel of the team and everyone else on the bus was "This guy can't drive!"
After we finally made it through the Parkway, we went to Lexington and picked up Ellery Moore and others off of Nicholasville Road. During that part of the journey, which took over a hour, we drove into 2 trees and hit at least 3 curbs.
Who is this driver?? I know it is hard to drive a huge bus like this, especially in a neighborhood, but cmon.... I already had thoughts that this guy couldn't drive, but I began to think something was wrong with him as well.
Keep in mind, this team has to play a game in a little over 17 hours, and sleep and rest is a pretty big priority. Living is too.
I am going to jump ahead, past the 1 hour gas station stop, where the driver forgot to put gas in the bus, to the drive through Indiana and Michigan.
I didn't get any sleep during this night, because everytime I dozed off, the bus would feel like it was running off the road. There was one time, heck 3 or 4 times, our bus was so close to a semi-truck, you couldn't put a playing card in between our vehicles.
Of course this caused Drillers players and me, to yell out because if we didn't we were surely to hit the trucks next to us. There were times on I-75 I just put my head between my legs like there was an earthquake... it was that bad.
The culmination of this bus ride from hell, ends near Flint, Michigan as we are flying down the interstate like OJ Simpson down the LA Freeway...and we had a cop behind us too.
I noticed out of the sideview mirror there was a policeman behind us with lights and siren blaring for at least 10 minutes. I actually tapped on Matt Barbour's shoulder, who was sitting across the aisle from me, and said, "Look in the mirror, he is pulling us over."
After the 10 mile bus chase with the Michigan State Police, the bus driver finally realizes that he is the one being pulled, and merges over to the shoulder.
The policeman comes to the side of the bus, gun drawn, and asks the driver to come outside. Come to find out, the driver was also packing a gun, and had to throw it over into the grass.
Keep in mind, this is a bus containing a team that was supposed to play in a championship game in a little over 8 hours...and now they are sitting on the side of the road with the bus driver getting arrested for multiple violations.
The reason the policeman gave for pulling us over was cars on the highway had called 911 because the bus was wreckless and they thought the driver was either asleep or drunk.
After the driver sat in the back of the cruiser for what seemed like another hour, he was brought back, but could not drive.
Great, now the bus doesn't have a driver, and we are 8 hours from Kentucky...what are we going to do now??
This is where wide receiver Justin Lamb enters this story. Lamb, who has a part time job with Pikeville college driving a bus, has his cdl. So, Lamb, who learns how to drive the Canton Cougars' bus on the side of the interstate, drives the last hour of the trip to Saginaw.
Yes, I am telling the truth...a wide receiver, who ends up scoring 3 touchdowns in the Ultimate Bowl, also drove the bus to the game.
Lamb didn't have the easiest drive either: having to drive in the rain, in road construction, and had to maneuver through 2 turnabouts to safely put us at the hotel.
This is what the Drillers had to go through just to get to their game, in which they fought valiantly, losing to the eventual UIFL Champion Saginaw Sting 86-69.
The game was the highest scoring in UIFL history as Sting QB Tommy Jones threw a record 10 touchdowns. Drillers QB Al Holland had 9.
Matt Barbour, who had as much sleep as I did, caught a record 6 touchdown passes.
Bus Driver Justin Lamb, who also drove the bus back to Kentucky the next day, had 3 TD catches.
The Drillers might have lost, but considering the circumstances, they did pretty well to even stay in the game for as long as they did.
Heck, they did pretty well to stay alive...