Point A to Point B
Posted on December 17, 2024 by Marketing and Communications
Even in this high-flying, high-tech age, the humble bus remains a key part of a complex, finely tuned and precisely coordinated collaboration.
HOW MANY BUSES does it take to fly the University of South Alabama football team to an away game? No, that’s not a trick question. The answer is eight or nine — not counting the semitrailer truck that hauls the equipment. If that sounds complicated, welcome to the world of South’s transportation wizards and puzzle masters. Even in this high-flying, high-tech age, the humble bus remains a key part of a complex, finely tuned and precisely coordinated collaboration between South’s transportation and athletics staffs that moves athletes from point A to point B.
Paula Wallace, the University’s transportation coordinator, explains the intricacies along with Tyese Pelt, manager of facilities services and former transportation campus supervisor. They sit at a table in a no-frills Transportation Services Building room dominated by color-coded whiteboards on three walls. The whiteboards — large versions of the continually updated spreadsheets on Wallace’s computer — track the transportation needs of all members of the Jaguar family.
Wallace compares the scheduling, deploying and tracking of buses to a chess match and, sometimes, to fruit-basket turnover. “Before this, I directed weddings for 15 years,” she says, “so I’m used to it.” For competitions less than eight hours’ drive away, South athletes travel by bus. When the football team flies to distant away games, buses at both ends of the journey take the players, coaches and others in the traveling party to and from the airports, and back and forth between the hotel, the game day walk-through practice field and the stadium.
The team’s charter airliner (athletes in other sports, which have much smaller traveling contingents, fly commercial) doesn’t have room for equipment managers and some other staff members. So they make the entire trip by bus.
Meanwhile, the equipment, including trainers’ and medical supplies, travels in a 53-foot
semitrailer emblazoned “South Alabama” in linebacker-size letters. Depending on the
distance and time, that rolling billboard and the buses may need extra drivers. Federal
regulations allow bus drivers a 10-hour driving window before a mandatory eight-hour
break. For cargo drivers, it’s 11 hours driving after 10 hours off.
What if trouble strikes, like a bus breakdown? You reach out to charter bus contacts, call in favors, do whatever it takes to meet the schedule. “We have to have good customer service skills,” Wallace says, “because you’ve got to be flexible, you’ve got to have patience and you’ve got to accept change.”
South made national news in September by doing all of the above to help the New Mexico football team make it to its game at Auburn. Bad weather diverted the Lobos’ flight to Mobile instead of Montgomery. The team asked South for help.
Pelt, reached at a high school football game where her cheerleader daughter was in the homecoming court, rounded up four drivers on a Friday night and coordinated the logistics, all by phone. South’s four buses picked up the Lobos and headed north, handing them off to the team’s regular charter bus company at Atmore, Alabama. Jon Clark, South’s football chief of staff, even had the buses stocked with hot pizza.
Transporting South’s nonfootball athletes is relatively straightforward. The women’s volleyball team, for example, travels to almost all away games by bus. A couple of times a year, the players carpool very early in the morning to the airport for a longer trip.
The team trainer checks three or four bags, says South alum and Assistant Coach Morgan Stalcup B.A. ’20 (criminal justice), MPA ’21 (public administration). One player checks the “tech bag” (projector for video study, radar gun for clocking serve speeds, computer equipment, etc.). Otherwise, Stalcup says, “They carry on everything.”
With one exception, the same is true for other teams. Golf bags, baseball and softball bags, tennis bags, bags for javelins and shots (for the shot put) — they’re all basically just luggage. Even vaulting poles, which can be up to 17 and a half feet long, can ride as cargo in planes or buses.
Not so for football. “We travel with trunks,” says Mark Hewes B.A. ’10, M.A. ’18 (both in communication). “It’s kind of like a rock band.”
Hewes is assistant athletic director for equipment services. The trunks have wheels and are made of plywood in different sizes depending on what they store: helmets, cleats, jerseys, equipment repair tools, headsets and so on. What goes in where, and in what order, is all meticulously diagrammed.
Team equipment takes up 60% of the Jaguars’ semitrailer, which is usually found between games at the Football Field House loading dock — the one with the giant jaguar fang at each end. Gear for the team trainers and sports medicine personnel fills the other 40%.
Early on the week of a Saturday away game, Hewes says, “We’ll clean everything and replenish stock of anything that we used that previous game. Then, starting on Tuesday, the trainers will start loading all their stuff.”
The trainers finish about 2 p.m. Wednesday. Then Hewes’ staff starts loading. After the team’s practice on Thursday, the staff adds the helmets, shoulder pads and other gear. By 5 that afternoon, the truck is ready to roll for an arrival at the team hotel no later than 9 o’clock Friday morning.
Growing up, Hewes says, he loved playing Tetris, the video game that involves perfectly
fitting together variously shaped pieces. Now, he’s doing the same thing, except with
the equipment trunks. “It’s just a big game of Tetris on that truck.”
Whether chess match or video game, the collaborative effort that gets teams to and
from games always has the same goal: contributing to a Jaguars win.
The Long Haul
Transporting football team equipment, trainers’ gear for away games:
TUESDAY
Trainers start loading truck.
WEDNESDAY
2 p.m.: Trainers finish; equipment staff starts loading.
THURSDAY
After practice: Player gear (helmets, pads) loaded by 5 p.m. Truck departs.
FRIDAY
By 9 a.m.: Truck reaches team hotel, unloads some gear, drives to stadium, finishes unloading.
SATURDAY
6 hours prekickoff: Managers, trainers, video crew arrive at stadium. 2 hours prekickoff: Players, coaches arrive. Postgame: Managers, trainers load gear; truck leaves for Mobile.