The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Tuesday, September 29, 2015 — 11A
One Hundred Twenty-Fifth Anniversary
Hill performances
through the years
Sports writers recall
their favorite road trips
Traveling to cover
games across the
country is a sacred
Daily tradition
By KEVIN SANTO
Daily Sports Writer
There’s only one thing that
could connect the dots between
an impounded car in Chicago,
a week in Hawaii, a 1,000-
mile drive to Oklahoma City,
a 24-hour Greyhound trip to
Omaha and a journey to Alaska.
It’s
a
hypothetical
line
labeled, “Michigan Daily Sports
Road Trips.”
But those trips are much more
than just stories told around the
newsroom from time to time.
When former Daily writers look
back on them, they remember
how it felt to drive back to Ann
Arbor on a random interstate at
some ungodly hour, wondering
if the road would ever end. But
they also recall the thought
they had immediately following
that: how hundreds of Daily
writers have been on that same
interstate throughout the past
125 years.
One of those writers, Liz
Vukelich, covered the Michigan
hockey
team’s
most
recent
NCAA Tournament appearance
in 2012. The lesson she learned
on the drive to Green Bay was
rather unfortunate.
Vukelich and her fellow beat
writers— Everett Cook, Zach
Helfand and Matt Slovin —
stopped in Chicago for dinner
en route to the tournament.
Due to the traffic in the city,
the group resorted to parking
in a Walgreens across the street
from their restaurant of choice.
An hour later, after dinner, the
hockey beat returned to the
Walgreens only to discover their
car was missing.
“We were kind of freaking
out, like, ‘Oh my God, did the
car get stolen?’ ” Vukelich said.
“Then we realized there was
this big sign saying, ‘Parking for
Walgreens customers only.’ We
thought we were in the clear
because we had gone in (the
store) to buy a stick of gum.”
According to Vukelich, they
were visibly distressed in the
parking lot when a cab driver
came to their rescue. The driver
explained that he saw the car
get towed, and offered them a
free ride to the car impound,
where they found Slovin’s car.
Though the debacle set the four
reporters back a few hours and
a few hundred dollars, they
arrived in Green Bay in time to
cover the game.
“It’s funny, because I live
in Chicago now, and I walk by
that Walgreens all the time,”
Vukelich said. “It’s weird that
one of the most memorable road
trip experiences I have is almost
part of my daily life here. Every
time I walk by it, I always have
to Snapchat a picture of it to my
friends that were on the beat
with me that year.”
While
Vukelich
had
an
unpleasant experience on the
road, Sharat Raju’s time as a
1998 Michigan football beat
writer was entirely different.
The Daily paid for Raju, along
with fellow beat writers Mark
Snyder and Jim Rose, to spend a
week in Hawaii to cover the final
regular-season football game
against the Rainbow Warriors
as well as the Maui Invitational,
in which the men’s basketball
team was competing.
Given that the trip happened
over
Thanksgiving
Break,
the paper was rarely printed,
essentially giving Raju and
the beat writers a Hawaiian
vacation with a side of sports
writing.
“It was almost all down
time,” Raju said. “It was over
Thanksgiving, so we didn’t have
that many stories during the
week. I think Jim Rose wrote a
column the day before classes
let out. It was something to the
effect of, ‘The light in the hotel
bathroom in Maui isn’t working.
And that is the only bad thing
that has happened so far.’ ”
Raju, Snyder and Rose stayed
at the media hotel, which
happened to be on the beach,
and celebrated Thanksgiving
together at the hotel buffet.
As if that wasn’t enough, the
trio went kayaking and took a
scooter tour around Honolulu
— led by a high-school friend of
Raju’s, who was serving in the
Army and stationed in Hawaii at
the time.
As he recalls, the group’s free
trip to Hawaii warranted some
jealousy from veteran reporters.
“I remember the Free Press or
the (Detroit) News reporter said,
‘Oh, good. Answering the age-
old question: How many Daily
reporters does it take to cover a
football game in Hawaii?’ ” Raju
said.
While Raju was part of the
Daily’s most enjoyable warm-
weather trip, writers have faced
a fair share of cold climates in
order to provide sports coverage
as well — none more notable
than Geoffrey Gagnon’s history-
making trip to Alaska.
On October 22, 1999, Gagnon
took part in the Daily’s first trip
to Alaska to cover the Michigan
hockey team’s exhibition against
Alaska-Fairbanks in Anchorage.
“(This) represents the latest
renewal in the Daily’s efforts
to spare no burden and avoid
no
distance
in
providing
comprehensive
coverage,”
Gagnon wrote in his column
upon arrival. “As we settle in
on the Kenai Peninsula near the
Turnagain Arm we embrace a
chance to make a bit of Daily
history of our own.”
Yet not even a nine-hour
flight to Anchorage can beat the
voyages Greg Garno and Jamie
Turner took to cover College
World Series in Oklahoma City
and Omaha, respectively.
In 1978, Turner stayed in Ann
Arbor to take summer classes,
and three staff members were
rotating on coverage of the
Michigan baseball team.
When
the
Wolverines
punched their ticket to the
College World Series in Omaha,
Turner was the only writer
available to cover it. However,
the Daily could only pay for a
hotel, leaving the other expenses
to fall on Turner’s shoulders.
Turner’s solution for making
the
trip
more
affordable
was to take a 24-hour-long
Greyhound bus ride to Omaha,
which warranted surprise and
sympathy from some of his
fellow passengers.
“You (would) have some
conversations with people who
inevitably will say, ‘I’m going
from
Chicago
to
Rockford.
Where are you going?’ ” Turner
said. “I’d say Omaha and they’d
just say, ‘Oh my god.’ ”
Despite the exhausting bus
ride, Turner did receive a small
reward when he arrived at his
hotel in Omaha.
While he was waiting in the
lobby of the hotel, Turner ran
into Tom Hemingway, the radio
voice of Michigan athletics at
the time. Since Turner didn’t
have a credit card, ATMs didn’t
exist and the hotel wouldn’t
accept an out-of-state check, he
struck up a conversation with
Hemingway to ask him to cash a
check for him.
The
conversation
evolved
to the point where Turner
told
Hemingway
how
he
occasionally broadcasted games
for the student section, at which
point Turner got a job offer.
If the Wolverines defeated
Baylor on Thursday, they would
play again Friday, the same day
as
Hemingway’s
daughter’s
high school graduation. After
Michigan shut out the Bears,
4-0, Turner broadcasted the
following game against then-
No. 1 Southern California.
Though the eventual national
champions
walloped
the
Wolverines, 10-3, Turner was
still left with a lasting memory
and memento.
“My parents recorded (my
broadcast) on a cassette,” Turner
said. “It’s buried somewhere
in my mother’s belongings. I’m
sure she’s the only person who
ever heard the whole thing,
because it was terrible.”
Thirty-five years later, with
almost no one available during
the Daily’s summer production,
Garno was forced to take his
1999 GMC Jimmy, which had
already accumulated 110,000
miles, on a trek to the Women’s
College
World
Series
with
photographer Nick Williams.
He was awake until midnight
on Wednesday producing the
Daily’s summer edition, and left
immediately from the Stanford
Lipsey
Student
Publications
Building that night to begin
his drive. As he traveled to
Oklahoma, he realized there
were rainstorms moving toward
the same destination. Garno said
he was pushing the speed limit
to race by storms that would
have become tornadoes, but
arrived safely to cover the event
that day.
Friday, however, his luck
ran out. Garno recalled how at
one moment it was extremely
sunny, before the sky turned
dark almost instantaneously — a
sign that a tornado was about to
touch down in Oklahoma City.
“Eventually,
(while)
I’m
running on six hours of sleep,
there was a tornado warning
in a mall, where I’m (hiding) in
an unfinished basement area,”
Garno said. “The entire time I
don’t really know what’s going
on because my phone doesn’t
have any service. Eventually,
the tornadoes passed and we
were okay. My car was intact,
and we celebrated with Chick-
fil-A.”
The
Wolverines
were
knocked out of the tournament
on
Sunday,
and
Garno
immediately started the drive
back to Ann Arbor because he
had class Monday afternoon.
Garno’s trip — along with
those of the writers who came
before him — are the most
concrete representation of the
lengths the Daily sports staff
has gone to in order to provide
Michigan sports coverage for
125 years. If there’s a story to
be found, there are few length
Daily sports writers won’t go in
order to find it.
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125 YEARS OF THE DAILY
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