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.

THANK YOU FOR READING
125 YEARS OF THE DAILY

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