They will be gone from home for almost 23 hours, travel 552 miles and cross into a different time zone. They will ride from middle Oregon to the Idaho border where they will drop a 40-28 heartbreaker to the Jordan Valley Mustangs.

The football team is not alone though. The girls volleyball matches are scheduled at the same time, so schools can save on expenses. Everyone rides the same bus.

That means on travel days that 28 of the 39(need to cq this) students from Mitchell High School are on the bus. And for some of them, like Freshman Dalton (name to come) it’ll be the first time he’s ever been to Burns or Jordan Valley.

Dalton started the morning with $14.00. Money his mother gave him for the two meals the team would eat along the way, but he won another dollar from his older brother Colton by taking a full breath into Colton’s open shoe.

Dalton says the smell nearly turned his stomach but he pocketed the bill, looking forward to the teams stop at McDonalds on the way home. The brothers sat together for some of the trip, exchanging thoughts about what they could see from their window; the absence of trees, the probability of snakes, the happiness a cowboy might find in the geography.

Sports can become an effort all over Oregon’s east side where schools like Mitchell often have to combine with a nearby school to have enough players for a football team. And once they get a team, they often travel long distances just to get a game.

For the past several years, Mitchell and Spray, communities separated by 36 crooked miles along highway 207 in Wheeler County, have combined because neither have been sure of enough players to have their own eight-man football team. Now they come together as the Mitchell-Spray Logger-Eagles. Spray wears the red helmets, Mitchell the blue helmets, but otherwise they dress as one team.

So for away games, like the one in Jordan Valley this past Friday, the Mitchell football and volleyball teams load up on one bus, which departs from their school, and the Spray teams do the same.

At the destination the boys combine to form the Logger-Eagles. The Mitchell girls play as the Loggers and the Spray girls play as the Eagles. All of them play against Jordan Valley.

The games are important, the kids will tell you that, but the long bus rides are part of the social fabric of living in a town like Mitchell. You might think it unlikely that most of any student body could load up on one school bus, but on Oregon’s east side it’s more common than you might think.

Week 5 | Crane

CRANE – For as long as anyone here can remember, kids have trudged up the mountain to tend to the large white letter C that stands for Crane High School. They call it C-Day and nearly everyone who has gone to school at Crane has a remembered tale about whitewashing the rock letter. Freshmen, of course, haul the paint, seniors bark instructions and everybody contributes to the annual tradition. But it’s the freshmen who get doused in smurf-blue. And Friday afternoon, as alumni turn down the gravel road for the homecoming football game, they glance up at the “C,” checking it, taking comfort in a Mustang tradition.

Week 4 | Heppner

HEPPNER – Chances are that sometime during your sporting life the word F-U-N has been tossed at you, perhaps when you least appreciated it. Something like this is supposed to be FUN, or it’s not about winning, it’s about having FUN. Well, out in Heppner they practice winning; the Mustang football team has not lost a conference game in something like a decade. But they also practice FUN. They are good at that too. Come on, wouldn’t you love an excuse to belly dive into a pit of oozing cold mud, scream past a blazing bonfire or hand paint the family car for a parade. They do all this and more in Heppner where Friday night football is a town tradition.

Week 3 | Astoria

ASTORIA – The band was done playing, the grandstand empty, but over on the practice field, in the dark, crisp coastal air, a party was just beginning. It’s this way after an Astoria High School football victory, time for the Fishermen celebration dance. The defending Class 4A champion defeated Estacada 47-30 last Friday, so the team finished the night with rituals that come with a win. Players hauled injured teammates in their arms, circled up together and honored one another for the effort. Then they danced and dived into the damp grass absorbing another victory.

Week 2 | Santiam Christian

CORVALLIS – Just like every one of his teammates, Santiam Christian team captain Matt Scruggs stood up and read his commitment aloud to the group before passing a note card with his promise to another player.

“Commitments, guys, that’s what separates us from everybody else,” explains coach Dave Langes. “When you get up and you make that commitment to the team, that’s what family is. The only thing you have to fear is letting the guy next to you down.”

A knee injury kept Scruggs from fulfilling his commitment to force three turnovers in their loss against Dayton. “Obviously, I wasn’t able to do it, but it fuels you for next week,” says Scruggs.

Week 1 | Unity

UNITY, OREGON – Wayne Wise has never coached football. In fact, he hasn’t picked up a football in 34 years. Six of his eight players are foreign exchange students who have never played the game. His quarterback, from Taiwan, is affectionately called Harry, because few including us can pronounce his given name. It’s 90 degrees, there’s no shade, and no substitutes.

Wise knew all this was coming, and still agreed to coach The Burnt River Bulls eight-man football team this season. He did it for one reason; he wanted the kids in Unity to have the same experience as others across Oregon. He wanted them to have the opportunity to play football.

Fielding a team at Burnt River is often a challenge. The K-12 school southwest of Baker City is too remote to combine with other schools as some in their league.

I started the day in an airplane where I photographed the stadium at dusk. It was a 6 pm game and we had to clear the airspace at 5 pm due to FAA regulations. Plenty of time to land and get back to the stadium for kickoff.

Jamie Francis and I teamed up to collect pictures and audio from the game. We put all the pieces in the talented hands of Rob Finch and here is what we all came up with … Civil War audio slideshow

Professional friends — skip this post if you don’t want to see a cheesy slideshow of my vacation trip this summer … it’s for my teammates.

I am not a runner and I don’t really like running. With that said, here is a slideshow of pictures taken by myself and some of my teammates during the Wild West Relay this summer. It was a great event. Running through the mountains of Colorado in the middle of the night was breathtaking — in more than one way.

After participating in Hood to Coast for 4 years, my wife Kristi and I decided switch things up and join a few friends for a similar event in Colorado. Our team consisted of 12 runners. Each runner was assigned 3 legs of varying difficulty (mine was the second easiest). The run started in Ft. Collins, took a small detour to Wyoming and ended up in Steamboat Springs. 195 miles.

Just to give you an idea of what the hard leg was like … Run up hill 2,000 vertical feet for 8.9 miles at about 10,000 ft. elevation in the mountains of Colorado … sit in a cramped van for 6 hours … then doing it all again two more times.

We ended the weekend by renting a house overlooking Steamboat Springs. Post race activities included a well earned trip to the hot tub and of course a beer chugging contest. I may not be the fastest runner, but I did claim the fastest drinker title. Keep practicing Betsy.

We finished in 32:08:08. Not bad for a bunch of runners from sea level.