Friday, October 10, 2008
No rocky roads for Catholic
The Celtics' football team has rolled up a lot of miles --and wins -- this season.
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Contrary to popular belief, the Roanoke Catholic football team's fight song is not Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again."
Try telling that to the 24 players who make up the Celtics' varsity roster.
Catholic (4-1) has yet to play a home game this year. Moreover, the Celtics already have logged 1,575 miles on the road with 1,518 of those coming in the last four games against Brunswick Academy, Rappahannock County, Greenbrier Christian and Massanutten Military Academy.
There's one big rule before each long trip back to Roanoke: take a shower.
Cleaning up after Saturday's 63-20 win at Massanutten was more difficult than mopping up a fourth straight opponent.
"We took showers in the sink, sort of," Catholic senior Charles Blevins said. "We washed our hair and got the important parts."
Catholic also posted four lopsided wins. The Celtics finally have a home game Monday night at Vinyard Park when they play Montcalm (W.Va.). Do they need to consult MapQuest?
"Vinyard's going to be pretty hard to find," senior running back Zach Zoller said. "We'll try Monday."
Catholic coach Bob Price said his team's road-heavy schedule was partly caused by the belief that the VIS would create a divisional setup in 2008 that would lock in seven guaranteed games.
"Everyone said it was going to go through and they were going to set the schedule," Price said. "It didn't go through and we were scrambling for games. We had a lot holes, late. We filled it with whatever schools we could fill it with."
Catholic still has a 280-mile round trip to play Blessed Sacrament-Huguenot in two weeks, raising the final mileage total to 1,855.
"Too much travelling for high school football," Price said. "It's hard to do schoolwork. You really shouldn't have to travel that far. We'd love to play Single-A public schools around here, but short of James River there's been none that have been willing to do that."
Price said Catholic's charter bus rolled back into Roanoke at 3:30 -- a.m. -- from the trip to Greenbrier Christian in Virginia Beach.
"Everyone tries to sleep, but buses aren't exactly great to sleep in," said the 6-foot-1, 195-pound Zoller, who has 704 yards rushing and eight touchdowns in five games. "The drive home is always terrible."
There's another downside to all the travel. It's costly.
Price, who runs R.L. Price Construction Co., gave a long pause before answering a question about reports that he funds part of Catholic's football program out of his pocket.
"I work closely with the school to make sure the needs are covered," he said. "Enrollment is down and they're tightening their belt in a lot of different places. They're over budget in several places. How that affects athletics, obviously the people that feel the need for athletics to be there are going to have to step up and make some sacrifices to keep things going."
Blevins said Price runs a tight ship on the road, with some leeway. The team spent part of the Friday before the game at Greenbrier on the Virginia Beach waterfront.
"Coach told us we had 45 minutes to go walk around on the beach and the boardwalk," Blevins said. "He told us not to get in the water. One of them ended up in the water, but he bought Coach an ice cream cone."
Catholic's home opener is Monday because Montcalm already has a game scheduled for tonight. Montcalm will play at second game three nights later after a lengthy trip of its own.
Maybe the Celtics should treat it as another road game.
"We made a joke the other day about wearing our white jerseys when we get to wear our white jerseys for the first time," Blevins said.
Home. Where is that again?
" I'm not sure I remember," Price said.
