It’s Not Just Playing the Game, It’s Getting to the Game : Transportation: Long bus rides are the stuff of nightmares for high school athletes, their coaches, schools and supporters.

Rick Hayes, athletic director and football coach at Southern California Christian High School in Orange, was ecstatic last year when he learned that his school was to be moved from the highly competitive Olympic League to the newly formed and less competitive Arrowhead League.

“I don’t think this team could have survived in the Olympic League another year,” Hayes said then. “We’re just not big enough.”

But one year later, after experiencing the realities of traveling to such faraway Arrowhead League destinations as California School for the Deaf at Riverside and Elliott Pope Preparatory School in Idyllwild, Hayes is definitely less than enthusiastic.

Of course, 300-mile trips, endless traffic jams, broken-down buses, long and windy mountain roads and serious bouts of car sickness will do that to a guy.

For Hayes, transportation has become his team’s biggest nightmare. But he isn’t alone. Of course, not every high school team travels hundreds of miles each time it goes to a competition, but many teams, especially the perennial football powers, are sometimes forced to go beyond the county’s lines to find nonleague opponents.

Capistrano Valley, for example, opened the 1989 football season at La Verne Damien and two weeks ago it traveled south to play Point Loma. The Cougars see few changes in their future.

“Looks like we’ll be traveling even more next year,” Capistrano Valley assistant coach Ray Panici said. “The only confirmed games we have are Mater Dei and Edison. We’ll be scrambling to find three other opponents.”

What are the main problems with transportation? Coaches and administrators generally agree on three: the stress and strain on the coaches and athletes, the financial burden on the schools or sometimes even the athletes themselves, and the fact that long, traffic-marred trips often scare away the bulk of the team’s fan support.

For the athletes, a long bus trip can be a detriment to on-field performance. After 30 minutes or so on the road, players can become sleepy, lethargic, or, in some cases, even sick.

“We have at least one (player) a year get sick in the bus,” Hayes said. “Last year, one of our baseball players got so sick, he couldn’t play in the game. And last week, on the way up to Twin Pines (in Banning), it happened to one of our key backs. It’s a problem.”

And because players must often leave school early to go to distant games, classroom performance can also be affected. This is especially true for students who play sports--volleyball, tennis, cross-country and water polo--that have scheduled competitions more than once a week.

“You’d think kids love getting out of class, but you’d be surprised,” said Paul Marks, activities director at Santa Margarita. “Many times, they have to get out at 1 and our school day is out at 2:40. They don’t like it. They know they’ll have to spend extra time with the teacher.

“It’s a situation where, in the next few years, we’re going to have to think of some creative ways to not ruin the classroom time.”

Another problem is transportation cost, which like almost everything else, has increased over the years.

In Orange County, many schools secure bus transportation through their school district offices, which may offer slightly reduced rates.

Others, especially the private schools, rely on privately owned companies such as Mark IV Transportation of Gardena, Durham Transportation of Rosemead or Laidlaw Transit of Van Nuys.

John Clark, director of contract and leases for Mark IV, says transportation costs for a five-hour trip range from the low $200 for a regular 52-passenger bus to nearly $300 for an air-conditioned coach. Of course, additional hours--extra innings, overtimes--mean extra costs, and when teams need more than one bus, well . . .

“It’s extremely expensive,” said Gary McKnight, Mater Dei’s athletic director and basketball coach. “A bus can be $200 to $300 a shot. And when you start looking at the schedules of 12 sports, and of that there’s at least two to three levels in each, some with five levels, you start multiplying $300 for 12 sports and you’re talking thousands of dollars.”

And at times, coaches say, the bus service is not nearly as efficient as costs would lead many to believe. Along with endless tales of flat tires, broken down and/or lost buses, one of the most interesting bus stories comes from McKnight.

“One year we were heading to a CIF quarterfinal (basketball) game at Long Beach City College,” he said. “But the bus company ran out of buses. They sent us an OCTD bus instead. . . . Every time we stopped at a corner, people were trying to get in. We’re trying to tell people, ‘No, no, no! We’re going to CIF! We’re going to CIF!’ ”

To help defray costs, some schools require their athletes to pay a transportation fee. At Edison, it’s $30 per sport per student, with a $90 maximum per family.

At Southern California Christian, which owns a 36-passenger bus driven by one of the school’s mathematics teachers, Hayes says the team usually opts to charter a coach for trips longer than 1 1/2 hours. The athletes must pay their own way.

“Our last trip (to Boron) cost about $800, and last week to Silver Valley (outside Barstow) it was about $800, too,” Hayes said. “It gets real expensive for the kids.”

To further cut costs, some school districts, such as the Garden Grove Unified, “recommend” that the schools do not travel further than a certain distance for regularly scheduled athletic events.

According to Garden Grove Unified School District spokesman Alan Trudell, the district recommends that athletic events take place within a 25-mile radius of the school.

“If there are extenuating circumstances, they may appeal to the (district) administration for approval,” Trudell said, adding that travel to Southern Section competitions is not restricted.

At Esperanza, football Coach Gary Meek had scheduled a game this season against Barstow. But then Meek was told by his principal that a trip of such a distance would not be allowed by the Placentia Unified School District. Barstow ended up traveling to Esperanza for the game.

Said Meek: “We needed an away game, I didn’t know about the rule. It’s getting to the point now where it’s difficult to find games . . . especially when many local teams (don’t want to play you).”

Garden Grove Unified also employs a “shuttle system,” in which one bus is used to transport several teams in scheduled intervals. Pacifica football Coach Bill Craven explained:

“Our freshmen will get on a bus and go to Los Amigos. They’ll get off, and the Los Amigos sophomores get on and go over to Pacifica.”

Rancho Alamitos volleyball Coach Pat Adams says the shuttle system is the pits.

“A bus will take one team to a site, then it will come back and take another team to a site, etc.,” Adams said. “Sometime you end up waiting an hour to get to a game.”

And getting back to school can be much worse. “Our freshmen and sophomores start their games at 4:15,” Adams said. “But because they make them wait until the varsity game is over until they can come home, sometimes they don’t get back until 10:30 at night. The parents are really upset, and justifiably so.”

Speaking of parents--and fans in general--transportation has its adverse effects on them as well.

Basically, for many schools, longer trips means less fan support. Although most schools offer rooter buses to away football games, that, too, can be expensive.

At Santa Margarita, a recent game at Harvard High in North Hollywood cost rooter bus riders $8 each. To encourage fan participation, Father Michael Harris, Santa Margarita’s principal, granted a half-day so more students and teachers would make the trip to North Hollywood.

But despite such measures, many fans do not put up with the hassles of long-distance travel. Players and coaches, however, have little choice. So the search for solutions to the transportation problem is an on-going effort.

A few ways some schools have managed stress from on-the-road overload:

--At Mater Dei, football Coach Bruce Rollinson advocates stopping at a church along the way to each game. That way, along with attending Mass, the Monarchs can have a snack, stretch out, and go through last-minute walk-throughs on the parish grounds.

--At Santa Margarita, football Coach Jim Hartigan opts for a stop at a park near the game site. There, the players snack on packed lunches, and--as with Mater Dei--go through final pre-game preparations.

--Realizing that his players lose valuable class time by leaving school early for games twice a week, Richard Schaaf, Santa Margarita’s basketball coach and athletic director, calls the opposing team ahead of time to reserve a classroom at the school in which his players can study.

--Next year, Servite will move from the Angelus League to the Del Rey League, which includes schools from as far away as Crespi in Encino and Loyola in downtown Los Angeles. Tom Vitello, Servite’s athletic director, said an effort will be made to schedule games on Saturdays when traffic won’t be as bad.

Although these are small solutions, most believe they are better than nothing. Especially because the problems associated with transportation are not likely to go away soon.

“This is not a little old county,” Woodbridge football Coach Gene Noji said. “It’s only logical that the (more crowded) it gets, the more schools are going to (compete in their own regions). I can see teams staying with general South county or North area, or teams in the southern-most county playing North San Diego teams.”

But, Noji added: “We’re sort of spoiled. (In) Central California, you might travel two hours for each game because that’s where the next school is.”

Athletes at Southern California Christian can certainly relate to that.