Graham’s girls’ tennis team didn’t travel to play Reidsville on Wednesday, but that schedule change was due to nothing more than rainy weather, and not the gas distribution problems felt across North Carolina and the Southeast.
At Southern Alamance, where the softball team has been piling up the miles while traversing the state and advancing through the Class 3-A playoffs, the Patriots again should be set to ride in style this weekend, with their charter bus’s next destination the state championship series.
For all of the long lines at gas stations and panic-buying at the pump, high school sports teams in Alamance County haven’t been impacted by the scramble for fuel that has alarmed so many others this week, school athletics directors said.
“No one has said anything to us about holding back,” Eastern Alamance athletics director John Kirby said Wednesday. “We haven’t heard any different, so we’re proceeding as normal.”
Kirby said that meant the Eagles traveled to Cedar Ridge on Tuesday night for a wrestling match, and will make the round trip of more than 100 miles to McMichael for a baseball game Friday night.
After last week’s hack of the nation’s largest fuel pipeline and the subsequent difficulties with getting fuel from refineries on the Gulf Coast to states that need it, some 74 percent of gas stations in North Carolina were out of fuel Wednesday night, according to gasbuddy.com, a technology firm that tracks real-time gas prices throughout the country.
Graham athletics director Kyle Ward said considering how a possible fuel shortage might affect high school sports teams in and around the county became a thought for him Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, as the images of gas hysteria made the rounds on social media.
Ward said a business-as-usual type of conversation with Alamance Burlington School System athletics director George Robinson on Wednesday offered some relief.
“Everybody was talking about people running out of gas in Graham and Mebane and the surrounding areas,” Ward said, “and I was like, ‘Well what are we going to do about travel for school buses and athletic buses?’ It did cross my mind, but nobody has mentioned anything about not going anywhere right now.”
Ward said Carrboro athletics director April Ross relayed to him that officials in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools district had put a hold on sports travel to away contests.
Southern Alamance athletics director Stephanie Smith picked up on a similar situation from colleagues in the Durham Public Schools district, who were told Tuesday to pause their sports teams’ travel to away games, but then later given the green light and the go-ahead.
“We haven’t gotten any information directing us that it’s impacting us,” Smith said Wednesday of the fuel complications.
Southern Alamance meets Alexander Central on Friday to open the best-of-3 state championship series for the Class 3-A softball title, with those games to be played at North Davidson High School in Lexington, a trip of a little more than 60 miles both ways for the Patriots.
Smith said through the efforts of the school’s athletics booster club, community members and parents of players, the Southern Alamance team has worked on gathering more donations to travel by way of charter bus, rather than activity bus, which has become something of routine.
That’s how coach Jon Russell, senior star Isley Duggins and the rest of the Patriots made the treks to Topsail (372 miles round trip) and Hope Mills Gray’s Creek (182 miles round trip), while winning the East Regional semifinals and finals, respectively, and securing a spot in the state championship.
“It started with the trip to Topsail,” Smith said, “because that one, you can do in an activity bus, but if you have an option of a charter bus, it’s a nicer trip. And it saves your coaches from having to drive, which helps a lot as well, because the charter bus company has their own driver.
“Community members donated and families with the team helped raise the money to cover that charter bus for that first trip, and then they did the same thing again for the Gray’s Creek trip. And so they’re working on it now, and fortunately we just have a really sweet community that’s very supportive.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Adam Smith is a sports reporter for the Burlington Times-News and USA TODAY Network. You can reach him by email at asmith@thetimesnews.com or @adam_smithTN on Twitter.
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