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Conor's Blog: The plane ride
3/14/2008
Blog1
This is Conor Nicholl, Sports Reporter for the Hays Daily News, on the trip with the Fort Hays State University men’s basketball team to the South Central Regional in Stephenville, Texas. The blog will feature an account of the trip, as well as notes, stats and as much fun things I can come up with.
Thursday afternoon: The team met at Hays Airport about 3:15 p.m. and we moved onto the tarmac about 45 minutes later. Head coach Mark Johnson played with his two kids, both under the age of four, while the team watched Div. I conference tournament basketball games on the airport’s TV.
We waited for about 40 minutes on the tarmac as the plane was fueled. Several players brought out digital cameras or recorders to record getting on the plane. When we got on the plane, I sat in the back next to junior guard Charles Robinson, a transfer from Missouri State University- West Plains. Robinson, one of the first ones on the plane, was asleep when I sat down.
He didn’t move the entire trip.
I asked Tyrone Evans, sitting across from me, if this was rare.
“No not really,” Evans said. “Though usually not this early.”
Robinson was far from the only one that slept. The majority of players read the newspaper or slept. Evans, Robinson, Greg Schmidt, LaTravis Turner and Casey Miles were among many players that dozed off. Senior guard Jake Sims, flashing a Toronto Blue Jays, appeared to be the only one doing a little schoolwork.
(By the way, the Blue Jays are one of my favorites to contend in the AL East. Roy Halladay, a healthy AJ Burnett, Jesse Litsch, Shaun Marcum and Dustin McGowan, not bad for a rotation. I really think they could win 87-92 games).
In fact, the only thing I could hear was Terry Jeffries a few rows behind me playing cards on his drop-down table. Personally, I read Sporting News magazine and learned more about Delaware QB Joe Flacco, the big small-school name in the draft.
Sophomore Ryan Herrman also pulled out his laptop and popped in some Family Guy episodes. Well played sir, well played.
The trip, for being a small plane, was actually quite smooth. That is, until we landed. It was quite bumpy, a little bit like going over five speed bumps at 40 miles an hour. Robinson, who hadn’t done anything the entire trip, shot awake and was quite disoriented.
The entire plane was a little worried and even the stewardness seemed concerned. But we landed and we made the 40 minute drive to our hotel. We had several cars and I rode with Gerard Wellbrock, play-by-play man for FHSU, and sports information director Ryan Prickett.
We reached Stephenville, Texas, home of Tarleton State University. Stephenville is less than 17,000 people, so it’s smaller than Kirksville, Missouri home of Truman State University, my alma mater. To me, Kirksville is my cutoff for big town/small town size. Stephenville, unlike Kirksville, is spread out. A lot.
There is large land masses with absolutely nothing followed by hotels and restaurants that dot the landscape. By my rough calculations- I am not too good with figuring out sizes of cities- it’s bigger than Hays and much, much bigger than Kirksville.
Stephenville, though, does have Starbucks and Quiznos and B-B-Q. Any town that has that is okay in my book.
More to come on the um…unique…accommodations that is the Texan Inn….
| Scoreboard | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Sport | Date | Opponent | Score |
| BB | 5/04 | Pittsburg State | W 17-5 |
| BB | 5/04 | Pittsburg State | L 4-3 |
| BB | 5/03 | Pittsburg State | L 15-7 |
| BB | 5/03 | Pittsburg State | L 5-4 |
| SB | 5/02 | Central Missouri | L 3-1 |
| SB | 5/02 | Missouri Western | W 3-2 |
| SB | 5/01 | Pittsburg State | W 6-0 |
| SB | 5/01 | Emporia State | L 11-0 |
| BB | 4/30 | Kansas Wesleyan | W 14-1 |
| BB | 4/30 | Kansas Wesleyan | W 12-2 |
