USU volleyball concludes an eventful road trip
The Utah State volleyball team encountered a few road bumps during their journey to a tournament at Oregon State University last weekend.
They met last Thursday morning at 8:00 a.m. on the dot to catch the bus to the Salt Lake City airport.
As the clock ticked down toward 8:30 a.m. they became confused about the bus failing to show up. After assistant coach Taubi Palmer made a few phone calls, the coaches and athletes realized the bus that was supposed to take them to the airport was scheduled for Friday, not Thursday morning.
“We called Motor Pool and Aggie Shuttle and nothing was available so we finally just drove our own cars and parked them in the parking lot at the airport,” head coach Grayson Dubose said.
Junior Carly Lenzen said all 16 players on the team squashed into 4 cars with large suitcases.
Once they arrived at the Gill Coliseum at Oregon State, Dubose said it was difficult to navigate such a large arena and the team required an escort to show them to the locker room.
During the first match of the tournament against Oregon State the Aggies outplayed the Beavers on paper, but lost the match 3-2 due to a mishap in a deciding set. Despite leaving the tournament with three losses, the Aggies looked at the outcome as a chance for improvement.
“We didn’t win but we played really well and learned a lot,” freshman Jaysa Funk said.
“You can’t always control the outcome but you can control the process of us getting better,” Dubose said.
After the tournament wrapped up with a 0-3 finish, the Aggies woke up to more adversity on Sunday morning.
They were ready to board the bus for a ride to the airport to start their journey home when they found out the bus driver had locked his keys in the bus.
“We had to break a window to get in,” Dubose said. “It was all very dramatic and they had hangers going. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen that and I’ve traveled a lot over the years.”
Once the team boarded the plane, a fellow passenger passed out and an EMT had to come.
“It was nuts,” Funk said.
Despite the chaos that came with traveling during that trip to Oregon, Dubose said the team remained calm and showed appreciation to everyone and never let a ‘thank you’ go left unsaid.
He was proud to say their escort told the team “I’ve never seen a team that is more respectful than yours. Win or lose you guys are super respectful and I’m a big fan now.”
When it came to dealing with the transportation problems Funk noted “you can’t really do much, so you just take it and go with it.”
— Paige Cavaness and Megan McNulty