RIDING THE BUS.

Byline: Anne Williams The Register-Guard

Leaving the Sheldon High School parking lot soon after noon Tuesday, the charter bus held a boisterous and sizable cargo: pillows, blankets, duffel bags, groceries, bottled water and sports drinks, DVDs, cell phones, iPods, laptops, six coaches, one parent, the driver and 29 players on the girls' freshman, junior varsity and varsity basketball teams.

Spirits were high, despite some bickering at the outset over which movie to watch on the overhead TV screens. The girls were sprung from school for the day and en route to South Medford High School, where the varsity team was almost sure to clinch the No. 1 seed - and at least a share of the championship - in the Southwestern Conference.

But once the hubbub died down, many of the girls dug out pencils, textbooks, worksheets and notebooks. As they've learned in recent weeks, a 12-hour, 340-mile, school-night odyssey is no excuse for neglecting homework.

Leasing well-lighted, comfortable, faster charter buses for the Medford trips - at $1,000 a pop - is one way Eugene School District officials have tried to ease the burden for student athletes who are traveling longer and farther this year than ever before, thanks to an October 2005 decision by the Oregon School Activities Association.

The vote, intended to ease competitive imbalances among Oregon high schools, created two additional tiers in the league system, placing Sheldon and South Eugene into a new, 6A league with South Medford, North Medford, Grants Pass and Roseburg, and severing their ties with local rivals such as Willamette and Churchill.

While popular in most of the state, the decision unleashed a furor among parents, teachers, coaches and athletes in Eugene. The Eugene, Medford and Salem school districts launched costly, yet-to-be-resolved legal fights. Critics decried the end of cross-town rivalries and the prospect of longer road trips, higher travel costs and smaller crowds at far-flung games.

A chief concern was the potential academic toll on students, who would regularly miss half-days of school, do homework on bumpy, noisy bus rides, and show up for classes the next morning dog-tired.

After six months, it seems many of those worries were valid. Gate receipts have plunged, travel expenses have skyrocketed, and kids and coaches alike are exhausted, according to district athletic officials.

But Tuesday's bus ride also proved this: These kids are flexible, resilient and passionate about their sport, and most are successfully juggling the demands of team and teachers.

"Before the season started everyone thought it would be really bad, but it's not that horrible," mused Kendra Little, who - as a senior and the varsity team's star player - had a seat to herself on the bus. "You get to bond more with your teammates. ... And we have some great teams in the conference. It's nice to have to get ready for every game. Every game means something. It's sort of been a blessing in disguise."

Tuesday's trip was the girls' third and last to Medford this season. They've been to Grants Pass twice and Roseburg once, and they will play their final game of the regular season in Roseburg on Tuesday. League games are Tuesdays or Fridays, with the freshman and JV teams up first at 5:15 p.m., followed by varsity at 7 p.m.

While the realignment applied to all league sports, basketball has the most long-distance games, all in winter. By season's end, the Irish girls will have logged 1,884 miles traveling to and from league games - about the same as driving from Eugene to Minneapolis.

But the recent journey hardly felt like a slog, at least not the daylight leg. With their coaches and Little's father, former University of Oregon basketball player Doug Little, sitting up front, the girls shared snacks, groused about classes and giggled over text messages on their cell phones.

Varsity players Mohona Doe, a sophomore, and Taylor Ward, the team's sole freshman, donned earphones and watched "She's the Man" on Ward's portable DVD player. Little listened to hip hop on her iPod and gazed out the window. Tami Brown, a sophomore on the varsity team, knitted a cream-colored jacket for her cell phone. She said she is not able to focus on homework.

"There are just so many people talking, it's hard for me to concentrate," said Brown, whose big sister, Theresa, is also on the team. "We talk a LOT."

Katie Pavlat was one of five or six players who spent most of the journey immersed in schoolwork. With plans to attend a top college to study biomedical engineering, she's on the honors track and has found it tough to keep up.

"It's still manageable," said Pavlat, who was missing her afternoon Advanced Placement calculus class. "My grades haven't suffered yet but it does make it more of a challenge to keep up with the teachers."

While she's sad her parents can't be at all of her games, she likes the competitiveness of the new league and finds it "intriguing to be the guinea pigs."

"I guess I was more against it than some girls because I was a senior and I had played the other schools," she said. "But really, I almost like it more this year. I enjoy traveling - it's kind of fun to go on road trips."

After about two hours on the road, driver Rich Patch pulled off for what has become a regular stop at a state park in Canyonville. The girls peeled off the bus, most of them sprinting to the playground to take turns on the swings.

Standing outside, longtime head coach Luke Roth said he likes the new challenges of the realignment, but acknowledged his own fatigue. He teaches in the International High School program at Sheldon and South Eugene, and sometimes has a 7:30 a.m. class to teach the day after games.

"It wears you down," he said, "but we try to look at the positives of what we're doing."

Players in IHS have had the hardest time keeping up with school work, the students agreed. One such varsity player, junior Corinne McWilliams, gets queasy if she tries to do any work on the bus. She was planning to hunker down with her homework in a quiet corner of the South Medford locker room during the freshman and JV games.

"I tried taking Dramamine, but that made me sleepy," said McWilliams, who's taking pre-calculus, literature, economics, Spanish literature and Spanish history this term.

She misses the old league.

"To me, there's still not the same rivalry," said McWilliams, who plays soccer in the fall and will do track in spring. "Before, you'd get to know the girls, you'd see them around town. You'd learn how they play."

Things quieted down for the last hour. One girl braided another's hair in the aisle, and some riders nodded off. As the bus rolled into Medford around 3:45 p.m., Tami Brown woke up the stubborn snoozers by tickling them with strands of yarn.

Families make the trip

To rouse muscles and minds after the long bus ride, Coach Roth led his varsity players on a brisk walk twice around the track in the late afternoon sun. But with South Medford struggling mightily this season, players on all three teams knew the odds were on their side heading into Tuesday's games.

During the JV game, the varsity players sat in the stands, some watching closely and hollering words of encouragement, others doing homework or talking on cell phones. Junior Katie Steigleman made a construction paper Valentine's Day card for her boyfriend.

Chad Egge and his 9-year-old son, Elliott, appeared to be the only JV supporters who made it down for the game. The elder kept score during his freshman daughter Emily's game. A Coburg-area farmer, he said he's only able to come to her games because it's a slow time of year.

"But with gas and a meal, it's $100 just to watch your girl play," Egge said.

With relatively easy victories under their belts, the freshman and JV players took their turn in the stands to watch the varsity game. Nine or 10 other Eugene fans drifted in, including Taylor Ward's parents, sister and grandfather, the Brown girls' father and McWilliams' mother.

Pavlat's mother and aunt surprised her by showing up. While her daughter may have come to accept and even prefer the realignment, Laura Pavlat has not. She hates the travel, misses the rivalries and, as a booster club parent, bemoans the decline in gate receipts.

"I was very much against it," said Pavlat, who had taken a half-day of vacation from work in order to be there. "When we had that icy weather, as a parent, you're a nervous wreck the whole time they're gone."

Katie is an extraordinarily disciplined scholar who's been able to keep her head above water, her mother said, but she knows other girls' grades have suffered.

Pavlat dismisses arguments from some rural districts that Eugene teams are simply getting a taste of what theirs have endured for years traveling to faraway schools.

"They choose to live in a rural area. They're going to have to travel for everything they do," she said. "I choose to live in a metropolitan area."

The game went as predicted, with the Irish holding a 15- to 35-point lead throughout. With a final score of 79 to 49, the girls celebrated and posed for a team photo.

But that excitement was soon eclipsed as word spread that the Sheldon varsity boys' team was leading top-ranked South Medford back home. A crowd gathered around a South Medford dad who was listening to the final seconds through earphones and giving a play-by-play account. The girls - especially junior Emily Gray, who dates varsity player Brent McKee - exploded with the news of the final score: Sheldon 65, South Medford 61.

"It's a good night to be an Irish, that's for sure," Little said, heading for the shower.

The journey ends

The bus pulled away at 8:54 p.m. After a 20-minute stop at a strip mall, where the girls fanned out to WinCo, Burger King and Jack in the Box for provisions, reality set in.

Some girls grumbled that they hadn't been able to watch the boys' game; before the realignment, the teams played on different nights.

Coach Roth resisted pleas for another movie, so the Brown sisters huddled with a portable DVD player and watched "Over the Hedge." Mohona Doe talked on her cell phone. Katie Pavlat, along with girls who had procrastinated on the trip down, flipped on her overhead light and hauled out the books.

Teea Rogers, a sophomore on the JV team, cleared space in the aisle and stretched out with her pillow, watching "Grey's Anatomy" on the tiny screen of her digital media player until she drifted off to sleep.

"I'm getting used to it," she said of the journey. "It gets shorter and shorter."

The girls were thankful, at least, that Wednesday was a late-start day. On other post-game mornings, some of them have had to be in classes as early as 7:30 a.m.

By Roseburg, the bus was quiet and mostly dark. Nearly everyone was asleep, except for a half-dozen girls still doing homework.

In Eugene an hour later, the driver turned on the overhead lights as he pulled off Interstate 5. Tami Brown groaned: "Oh my gosh, you turned the lights on too early!"

Cell phones lit up as the younger girls called parents with a five-minute warning to come fetch them. Several idling cars were already waiting in the parking lot when the bus arrived just after midnight. Rubbing their eyes, the girls gathered their belongings and quickly dispersed.

Corinne McWilliams walked across the lot to her car, wiped off the windows and headed home to start in on her math homework.

12:40 p.m.: Tami Brown (left) and Katie Steigleman take a vote to see which DVD the team will watch on the ride south to Medford.

8:31 p.m.: Emily Gray and her Sheldon teammates celebrate when they learn that the Sheldon boys upset top-ranked South Medford.

2:55 p.m.: Sheldon varsity player Kendra Little takes in the view on her way down to Medford.

10:05 p.m.: Junior varsity player Teea Rogers sleeps on the floor of the bus during the trip back to Eugene from Medford.

4:31 p.m.: Sheldon players find an unused locker room at South Medford High School and work on their homework.

8:27 p.m.: Sheldon girls gather around a radio in the South Medford gym to hear reports on the boy's game in Eugene.

9:38 p.m.: Now nine hours into their trip to Medford, Theresa Brown barters fast food as Katie Pavlat eats dinner.

1:53 p.m.: As the 12-hour, 340-mile bus ride to South Medford High School drags on, the Sheldon girls kick back and do whatever it takes to get comfortable.

2:29 p.m.: Junior Katie Steigleman plays on a swing at a rest stop in Canyonville, a traditional stop on the way to South Medford High School, as her teammates watch.

WHERE IT STANDS

The Oregon School Activities Association's redistricting plan, which is supposed to stand at least through the 2009-10 school year, is being challenged on several fronts:

In court: An oral argument before the Oregon Court of Appeals on challenges by the Eugene, Medford and Salem school districts will be heard in Salem in the Supreme Court Building on March 12 at 9 a.m. The hearing is open to the public, but there will most likely be no time for public comment.

In the Legislature: Three bills aimed at altering the OSAA's governance and weakening its power over redistricting actions have been drafted, one by Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan Castillo, one by Sen. Vicki Walker, D-Eugene, and one by Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene. No hearings have yet been held.

Before the State Board of Education: The board is considering administrative rule changes that would give school districts more say in how high school sports are governed and give safety, academics and cost greater priority in decision-making. The board will hold a public hearing March 21 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. in the Public Service Building, Room 251A, and could vote in April.